Brewing a greener future: Reunion Coffee’s new compostable coffee pod packaging

Ontario-based specialty coffee company Reunion Coffee Roasters opens a new chapter in their sustainability journey. They recently upgraded the packaging of their soft coffee pods with BPI-certified materials. When launched 15 years ago, Reunion’s pods were one of the first compostable coffee pods on the market. Now, the pods are also being packaged in plastic-free envelopes, an achievement that Reunion Coffee Roasters president is very proud of.

Reunion was established in 1995 by Adam Pesce’s dad, Peter Pesce. Peter is one of the pioneers of the specialty coffee industry in Canada. His first business was Bourbon Coffee, which began operating in 1978.

“He found coffees he liked and took the time to develop the recipe to roast them. That was quite new back in the seventies,” explains Adam.

Bourbon became so successful that Kraft Foods bought it in the late eighties. Peter continued to work at Bourbon until 1995. He then started Reunion with the intention of focusing largely on his passion of specialty coffee-making. As Adam says, “just wanting to care about the coffee and less about the corporate infrastructure.”

Reunion continued to grow, thanks to Peter’s reputation for offering quality coffee and stellar customer service. When Adam joined the business in the early 2000s, sustainability became the third pillar of the business.

“As I started to understand coffee better, I started to also understand that it would be a great medium for doing good in the world … Coffee is this inherently exploitive product. The privilege of my life had been built off what’s happening in the global south where coffee is grown … It became a bit of a moral imperative to me to do better,” recalls Adam.

Adam Pesce. Photo © Reunion Coffee Roasters

Sustainability at the heart of the business

In 2003, Reunion became one of the early adopters of Fairtrade policies. The company also has the Rainforest Alliance Certification. In 2008, it partnered with Bullfrog, a Canadian green energy retailer to offset the energy consumption at their Oakville, Ont., facility. In 2011, Reunion partnered with Trees For The Future. For every pound sold of their Sierra Verde coffee, Reunion plants two trees in developing countries. The company has planted over 1.1 million trees to date. In 2013, Reunion hit another milestone – it became a Certified B Corporation.

Reunion’s business started in the foodservice space, catering to restaurants in and around the GTA. Primarily a B2B coffee company selling to offices, foodservice establishments, and the hospitality industry, Reunion has been forced to carve a niche for itself in a field dominated by Keurig and Nespresso. With the introduction of their soft pods, Reunion found new opportunities to provide sustainable coffee solutions to businesses. Today Reunion Coffee continues to serve these segments of their business while expanding into café chains, grocery outlets and mass merchandisers. Reunion currently offers organic coffee, single-origin coffee, espresso as well as regular blends in dark, light and medium roasts, flavoured coffee and decaf.

Made from a plant-based material, Reunion’s soft pods are compostable. Photo © Reunion Coffee Roasters

While sustainability was a passionate response to Adam’s desire to do good, it has also become the business’s USP. The star gem in Reunion’s sustainability crown is their soft coffee pods, which they started manufacturing in 2004. The soft pods are made from abaca, a natural fibre that’s woven together. They are also compostable. The new pod envelopes, made in partnership with CP Flexible Packaging, contain plant-based materials and are BPI-certified compostable.

Additionally, Reunion’s pods can be used in a variety of brewers that support soft pods. I tried it on a pressurized brewer with a pre-infusion cycle that evenly saturated the entire pod. Reunion’s pods sat in a holder in the machine and water pulsed over it fully before the brew began, ensuring a full-bodied coffee and good extraction. Adam says one gets around 11 g of coffee with a TDS of 1.2 from a single pod.

Despite having a great-tasting and eco-friendly product, in the early days, sustainability wasn’t a sellable factor for Reunion.

“The selling feature was because there’s less plastic, they’re less expensive,” recalls Adam.

Over time, the sustainability movement has picked up speed, and consumers value products with less environmental footprint, which bodes well for companies like Reunion. The company’s next step is becoming carbon neutral. Adam’s singular focus on producing high-quality, specialty coffee that’s not harmful to the planet or people gives us the confidence that this goal is achievable even in an industry like coffee, which depends heavily on fossil fuel for shipping and roasting.