After Cascais and Guimarães, the project to collect and recycle coffee capsules arrives in Lisbon. The project promoted by the Associação Industrial e Comercial do Café (AICC), in partnership with six companies (Delta Cafés, JMV, Massimo Zanetti Beverage Iberia, Nestlé Portugal, NewCoffee and UCC) provides ecopoints dedicated to the deposit of used coffee capsules.
As of today, the capital will provide three mobile eco-centres that will be available in rotation in the city's 24 parishes and, until the end of September 2023, two more municipalities – Cantanhede and Almada – will be part of this initiative that guarantees the collection and treatment of used coffee capsules, in aluminum and plastic.
Carlos Moedas, Mayor of Lisbon (CML), said this Wednesday at the protocol signing ceremony by the various representatives of the coffee brands and the municipality, in the Town Hall, that the target set for the first year of The project's activity entails the collection of 20,000 tons of capsules. “Since this is a pilot project, I launch here the challenge of having an ecocenter in each of the 24 parishes”, said Carlos Moedas.
The municipality already had three mobile eco-centres that circulate for three days in each of the 24 parishes of Lisbon, but only for the collection of aluminum capsules, waste that the council was accumulating because it was not being sent for treatment, Cláudia Pimentel, secretary explained to Hipersuper -general of the AICC, on the sidelines of the event.
“The chamber's ecopoints only collected aluminum capsules and now they will collect plastic. And, despite collecting the capsules, the municipality had no treatment for this waste. What we came to add was the flow of plastic, which they did not collect because they could not separate it, and the treatment of both aluminum and plastic”, underlines Cláudia Pimentel.
Recycling and treatment are paid by participating companies. AICC partnered with the Spanish company Saica, “because in Portugal there are still no recycling companies qualified to carry out this recycling” and with the Bio4Plas, based in Cantanhede, which, as of December, will be able to recycle and treat all capsules in Portugal. “Then, in September, we moved to the Cantanhede council, which also collects capsules on its own initiative, but has no treatment”, explains the AICC secretary general.
“What we do is collect the residue, take it to a recycler, and separate the three components: aluminum, plastic and sludge”, he describes. And it gives examples of new products that can be born from the recycling of capsules. Coffee grounds are used as organic compost. Aluminum can be used to make ballpoint pens, bicycles, frames, glasses, among others. In the case of plastic, a granule is made that can be used in street furniture and rubbish bins, among other products.
The numbers are very positive. In Cascais, AICC has already managed to collect 3.8 tons of capsules in six months.
The idea now is to expand to new locations. “We have more councils interested in the project, but we have to give the councils leeway to have the ecocenters, the collection points, because there are many that still don't have it”, concludes Cláudia Pimentel.
