Matthew Flamm reports for Crain’s New York Business
New Yorkers who like making coffee from convenient—if environmentally dubious—single-serving capsules will soon be able to do so with a clearer conscience.
The Swiss coffee giant Nespresso is committing $1.2 million to help Sims Municipal Recycling process the company’s coffee pods, which are made from aluminum. That means city residents will soon be able to put aluminum coffee pods into their metal-glass-plastic recycling bin for collection by the Department of Sanitation.
Currently, that is not possible because the aluminum cannot be separated from the organic material in the used pods.
Sims, which works with the Department of Sanitation to handle most of the city’s residential recycling, will add another “eddy current” separating system to the one it has in Jersey City. The materials will be shredded either at the Jersey City facility or at Sims’ larger materials recovery center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
The eddy current creates a magnetic field that helps sort non-ferrous metals—i.e., those without iron content, such as aluminum, copper and brass—from other recycled material. In the case of the pods, the machinery will separate the aluminum from the coffee grounds and will allow Sims to process a variety of other products where non-ferrous metal must be separated from non-metallic parts, such as aluminum pots and pans with plastic handles.
“It allows us to capture more materials and convert them into higher-value non-ferrous products,” said Tom Outerbridge, general manager of Sims Municipal Recycling. “We will also use this same equipment to process the additional oddball non-ferrous products we get.”
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