Compostable coffee pods could be a thing of the future, thanks to an innovative Macclesfield company.

Already known for saving food waste across Macclesfield with environmentally-friendly composters, Tidy Planet have now teamed up with a forward-thinking coffee company to tackle plastic waste.

London coffeemakers Halo have made luxury coffee more eco-friendly, by creating an alternative to plastic coffee pods.

The special pods are made from waste sugar cane fibre and paper pulp – instead of aluminium or plastic – and all the packaging they come in is fully compostable. Even the black ink on the box is also produced using vegetable waste.

The Tytherington Business Park company are the geniuses behind the composter named after the TV celebrity, and hope companies can invest in both the pods and their composter to help save the planet.

The initiative is being trialled at Macclesfield's AstraZeneca site on Charter Way.

Tidy Planet said: "We've teamed up with AstraZeneca, Sodexo, Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, and Halo Coffee, to close the loop for one of the hospitality sector's trickiest, and most abundant, waste streams coffee pods."

"We see this as a massive challenge for not only the hospitality sector but society and businesses as a whole. That's why we've collaborated with some of the most innovative minds in the industry to help address the problem.

"Halo – the creator of the world's first pulp-based Nespresso-compatible coffee pods – provided AstraZeneca and Le Manoir [in Oxfordshire] with coffee machines and a batch of their pulp-based capsules, in a bid to help further strengthen their already sustainability-driven credentials."

As well as composting their organic wastage on the premises, both locations are now able to divert plastic from being landfilled."

The sustainable pods are combined with the food waste and fed into the Rocket Composter – affectionately named, Gino D'Compo, by AstraZeneca – to be converted into a valuable compost resource, for use in the sites' flower beds and cultivation plots.

Figures suggest there are 60 billion plastic coffee capsules manufactured annually – 75 per cent of which end up in landfill, and can take up to half-a-millennia to fully break down.

Tidy Planet, who's office building is called Redwood Court added: "We believe that on-site industrial composting is a key piece to helping solve the puzzle – not only giving organisations autonomy over their waste materials, but reducing off-site disposal costs, transportation, and carbon emissions too.

"We're incredibly proud to be a part of this movement to help the world's businesses sustainably manage their waste coffee pods – generating valuable nutrients for their soils – and we can't wait to see more organisations close the waste management loop."

There are currently no plans for it to work in Tassimo machines, but it is hoped that the sugar cane pods will take over the whole gourmet coffee pod market in the future.

Companies interested in purchasing a composter can contact Tidy Planet and Halo Coffee on [email protected] or [email protected].

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