One job, then a second life.
The coffee comes two ways. A 100g tub, built to be washed and refilled for years. A 500g bag for anyone who goes through more, which fills five of those tubs and uses far less material per gram of coffee. Both travel in a box that already lived a life as something else. Nothing is laminated, bonded, or mixed beyond saving.
This page is about what we pack the coffee in. For how it is grown, see Why Organic. For how it is tested and roasted, see Our Standard.
Most packaging is unrecyclable for one reason: it is made of too many things at once.
Foil bonded to plastic, plastic lined with paper, a window here, a metallised layer there. Each layer does a job, and together they do one more: they make the whole thing impossible to pull apart, which means impossible to recycle. Composites go to landfill. Single materials go back into the stream.
So every piece we pack in is made of one thing. A tub of polypropylene. PP, resin code 5, recyclable wherever rigid plastics are collected. A refill bag of a single material, with no foil laminate, recyclable where soft plastics are collected. A box of recycled board, fully recyclable again. What we send you should be as easy to read as the label, and as easy to let go of.
Protect the coffee first.
The most resource-intensive thing in the parcel is the coffee: grown for years, shipped across an ocean, roasted with care. Packaging that fails the coffee wastes all of it. Sustainability starts with a seal that works.
One material at a time.
A recycling plant cannot separate what a factory has bonded together. The tub is one resin. The box is one board. Every piece we ship sorts into exactly one stream.
Reuse before recycling.
Recycling is the second-best outcome. The tub is airtight, washable, and built to outlive the coffee inside it many times over. Refill it from a 500g bag, or bring it to the showroom, and the tub stops being packaging and starts being equipment.
Polypropylene, and nothing else.
The tub is made from polypropylene. PP, resin code 5. One resin throughout: no laminate layers, no metallised film, no second material hiding in the lid seal. PP is food-safe, light enough to ship without penalty, and tough enough to protect the beans from crush, light, and air on the way to you.
It is also one of the most widely accepted plastics in household recycling. Because the tub is a single resin, it recycles clean. Rinse it, dry it, and it goes out with your rigid plastics. But it was built for a longer life than one bag of beans. It holds a seal, survives the wash, and does not carry odours from one use to the next.
Recycling is the second-best outcome. Using it again is the first.Reuse first, recycle second
The bag exists so the tub can stay.
At 500g the maths changes. Five separate tubs use five times the plastic of one; a single 500g bag holds the same coffee in a fraction of the material. So the larger size ships as a bag, and the bag is a refill rather than a replacement. Wash a tub, dry it, decant, and the vessel you already own does the work again.
The bag follows the same rule as everything else. One material, no foil laminate, nothing bonded to anything. It recycles where soft plastics are collected, which is a narrower stream than rigid plastics, and we would rather it were the smaller part of what you send back.
Recycled going out, recyclable coming back.
The shipping box is made from recycled material, and it is fully recyclable in turn. The board that protects your coffee already lived a life as something else, and there is no reason it should not live a third.
Everything inside follows the same rule. Paper padding, paper tape, nothing plastic in the box. When the coffee is on your shelf, flatten the carton and the paper stream takes all of it. No peeling, no sorting, no part you have to pull off before the bin will accept it.
Three refusals.
No mixed materials.
No foil laminates, no plastic-lined paper, no bonded layers. If two materials would have to part ways at the recycling plant, we do not join them at the factory.
No plastic void fill.
No bubble wrap, no air pillows, no foam peanuts. Paper padding holds the tub still, and it recycles with the box it came in.
No vague claims.
We name the material. PP resin code 5 for the tub, a single-material bag for the refill, recycled board for the box. Your local collection rules get the final say, not our marketing. Where recycling depends on your area, we say so.
The short answers.
- Is Blaq Coffee packaging recyclable?
- Yes. The 100g tub is polypropylene, resin code 5, recyclable wherever rigid household plastics are collected. The 500g refill bag is a single material with no foil laminate, recyclable where soft plastics are collected. The shipping box is recycled board and recycles fully with paper, as does the paper padding and paper tape inside it. Rinse and dry the tub first. Collection rules vary by area, so your local scheme has the final say.
- What is the difference between the 100g tub and the 500g bag?
- The tub is the vessel and the bag is the refill. A 100g tub is airtight, washable and built to be used for years. A 500g bag holds the same coffee as five tubs while using far less material per gram, so anyone drinking more can decant into tubs they already own rather than collecting five more.
- What is the Blaq Coffee tub made of?
- One material: polypropylene, resin code 5. There are no laminate layers, no metallised film, and no second material in the lid seal. It is food-safe, airtight, and washable.
- Can I reuse the coffee tub?
- Yes, and we would rather you did. It is airtight, washable, and does not carry odours between uses. Refill it at home, or bring it to the showroom in Cheras and we will weigh straight into it.
- Is Blaq Coffee packaging plastic-free?
- No, and we will not claim otherwise. The tub is plastic, and so is the refill bag. We chose single recyclable materials that protect the coffee and, in the tub, can be reused many times, rather than a composite pouch that cannot be recycled at all. The box and everything inside it is paper.
