Grind – wonky coffee pods – Matilda Tidmarsh / Environmental Design: Materials, Ecologies, Futures (2022-2023)[SEM1]

Grind is ‘The planets favourite coffee pods’.

Grind have thought from top to bottom when it comes to their brand. 29,000 coffee pods end up in landfill every minute. On their website they have a stopwatch which is counting how many plastic and aluminium coffee pods are going into landfill since you clicked on their website. It’s quite alarming at the rate in which those numbers increase and also a very clear marketing scheme.

It made me think of the week 7 debate about should we learn to love plastic again and it’s further my belief that we should, it takes hundreds of years to break down and by the time it has it has killed many species. If we were to love plastic again we need to love the plastic we have already created and find new uses for it.

Grinds product being coffee, in pods, is recyclable, reusable and biodegradable. The coffee itself is responsibly and ethically sourced from sustainable smallholder farms, which in turn help support them and their communities. It is transported by carbon-positive methods, meaning that they are actually offsetting more carbon than is produced – not many companies can say they do that. The coffee is then roasted in London and distributed accordingly.

Their ‘pods are constructed from bacterial fermentation – plastic-free, organ extraction and biodegradable, while retaining freshness and shelf life’. You can put them in your compostable bins or food waste bin and they’ll disappear in a matter of weeks, faster than grass cuttings from your lawn. Also, if they don’t end up being recycled properly and end up in the ocean or landfill they will still break down and disappear, therefore not adding to the problem or the amount of waste we produce.