The advantages of using eco-friendly packaging are clear: they lower carbon emissions, increase customer happiness, and promote a circular economy.
Freshness is one issue with compostable, recyclable, and biodegradable coffee bags, though.
For instance, a lot of people are curious about how a rice paper pouch, which can degrade in as little as 90 days, will be able to sufficiently guard against exposure to moisture, oxygen, and light.
The answer is typically an internal lining. Interior linings strengthen environmentally friendly materials by acting as an extra defense against outside influences that can degrade the coffee’s quality.
The most prevalent options for inner linings are polylactic acid (PLA) and aluminum foil. One of the most prevalent raw materials on the planet is aluminum foil, whereas PLA is a bioplastic manufactured from renewable sources.
Although both are quite successful as extra barriers for environmentally friendly packaging materials, each has advantages and disadvantages of its own.
Why is an internal lining required for coffee bags?
Freshness has been a crucial component of high-quality coffee since the 1960s.
Coffee’s preservation is regarded as being necessary if consumers are to experience all the subtleties of flavor and scent. Its preservation is broadly described as the original, undamaged attributes of coffee.
While the amount of time between roasting and consumption is important, four environmental factors—oxygen, light, moisture, and heat—have a much greater impact on coffee’s freshness.
If the coffee is exposed to any of these “enemies” for an extended period of time, the result will be the staling of the coffee overall as well as aroma and flavor loss.
As a result, in order to maintain freshness and increase shelf life, the majority of roasters choose flexible multilayer packaging. By erecting a strong barrier against outside influences, multilayer packaging effectively protects the coffee.
They can be combined with a variety of different substances, such as kraft paper and rice paper, which by themselves only provide mediocre protection.
Using lightweight materials ranging from plastic to metal, coextrusion, lamination, or other coating methods, many layers are created. Aluminum foil and polylactic acid (PLA) are the two materials used in coffee packaging the most frequently.
Aluminium lining
Benefits
As the most prevalent element in the crust of the planet, aluminum is only second to silicon and oxygen. It is widely used as a liner material for coffee bags because it is indefinitely recyclable and reasonably affordable.
The barrier qualities of aluminum foil are some of the greatest available.In addition to being physiologically safe for food, it is also resistant to fire, water, water vapour, grease, gas, and light. It also does not charge electronically. In order to comply with the demands of contemporary packaging, it can also be painted and printed.
In a Spanish study comparing several mandarin juice storage containers, aluminum foil was shown to be by far the best in maintaining the beverage’s quality.
The container with an aluminum foil interior outperformed PET and cardboard with polyethylene in terms of blocking oxygen and preserving the color, flavor, and scent of the mandarin juice.
75% of the aluminum that has ever been produced is still in use. Because extracting aluminum from its ore, a time-consuming and expensive operation, uses around 90% as much energy as recycling aluminum, doing so results in significant energy savings.
Drawbacks
With almost seven billion aluminum foil containers still made each year, aluminum foil has been the preferred material for coffee bag interiors for decades, but they are not without drawbacks.
Although aluminum is eternally recyclable, it must first be separated from the other layers in order to be melted down and used again. This is one of the problems.
The discarded coffee bag must be brought to a specialized recycling facility with the tools necessary to separate the materials in order to accomplish this.
Customers, however, occasionally are not aware of these particular needs, which results in the aluminum foil-lined coffee bags being thrown out inappropriately.
Instead of being recycled, they wind up in landfills where they decompose and release potent greenhouse gas methane.
The thickness of the foil is another factor contributing to issues with coffee bags lined with aluminum foil.
In general, the foil is more susceptible to developing minute tears and pinholes the thinner and more flexible it is. If this occurs and oxygen, light, moisture, or heat enters, the coffee’s flavor and freshness will be quickly harmed.
PLA lining
Benefits
The fermentation of carbohydrates from renewable sources including maize, cornstarch, and sugarcane results in PLA, a toxin-free bioplastic.
Even though the fermentation results in resin filaments with properties resembling those of petroleum-based plastic, PLA can decompose in a commercial composting setting in as little as 90 days. In contrast, the typical lifespan of conventional polymers is 500 years.
Kraft paper and rice paper, two common materials used in coffee packaging, are frequently laminated with PLA. It can tolerate temperatures of up to 420°F, has a high tensile strength of 7,000 psi, and has effective water vapour and humidity barrier qualities.
Research indicates that PLA lined bags are a viable option for coffee that will be transported or stored for extended periods of time since they may shield the contents from oxygen and moisture for up to 12 months.
Drawbacks
The drawbacks of utilizing PLA are similar to those of using aluminum foil because it is unclear how to recycle it.
It can be composted, but only if a precise temperature and a specific set of bacteria are present in a controlled atmosphere. If it doesn’t, the soil it ends up in won’t totally breakdown and will become quite acidic.
Because PLA is discarded far too frequently with traditional plastics, recyclers are wary of it. The separation of the two is a time-consuming and expensive process.
In other words, if you use it as a bag inner material, you need to make sure that there are facilities for processing it and that customers can swiftly and easily recycle it.
PLA is gradually displacing aluminum foil as the preferred material for coffee bag interiors as society moves away from packaging materials that harm the environment. It not only has similar barrier qualities to aluminum, is lightweight, compostable, and generally accessible, but it also offers similar barrier properties, which helps to successfully keep the freshness of coffee.
A variety of coffee bags from Cyan Pak can have a PLA interior installed. Customers can choose a totally compostable solution when it is combined with kraft paper.
Contact our staff if you would need more details about our PLA lined coffee bags.
