Paper or Plastic?
Earlier this year, I attended Paris Packaging Week, a name that sounds fancy but is a little misleading. It suggests a week of varied events – a gift-wrapping championship, perhaps, or a presentation on new shrink-wrap styles – when in fact it’s a two-day trade show filled with booths from manufacturers and distributors. "Packaging Week" is a bit of an overstatement.
Still, I went for one clear reason: to discover innovative new ways to package coffee.
I arrived straight from the metro with high hopes, grabbed my badge, and began winding through the aisles. My mission was to scan for keywords: “Made in France”, “recyclable”, “compostable”, “circular economy”, “food grade”. I was searching for an undiscovered El Dorado of thoughtful packaging, hoping to find a product that met our needs or, at the very least, to spark some new ideas.
The truth is, today’s coffee packaging solutions are underwhelming. Working in a collective, we constantly share ideas to improve our work, but when it comes to packaging, it feels like we’re all doing variations on a theme. This is a problem, primarily because we’re creating more waste, which runs contrary to the sustainable approach we strive for.
Nearly all options are made from plastic. Even when it's recycled and recyclable, the system is so confusing that neither producers nor consumers can be confident it will end up anywhere but a landfill. We’ve also tested compostable bags, only to find that without fail, the plastic zip crumbles into the bag when first opened. This creates an entirely new problem: tiny bits of plastic in the coffee beans, the grinder, and potentially, the cup.
This is why the trade show, with its promise of innovation, felt so important. Sadly, I came away with little progress. My one tangible success was finding excellent food-grade amber glass jars made in France. We now use them for our microlots, but they increase the price and limit the capacity to 150 grams. And while they’ve been well-received, a frequent comment is, "It’s like a pill jar from the pharmacy," which isn't exactly the endorsement I was hoping for.
This whole experience, while frustrating, has been valuable research. It has pushed me away from ready-made solutions and into unknown territory. I'm now exploring options with specialty paper manufacturers and developing ceramic concepts I might be able to create myself.
I discovered a while back that a standard milk-frothing pitcher holds about 200 grams of whole-bean coffee. This sparked an idea: to create a plaster mold from one and slip-cast a ceramic pitcher and lid. It could be embossed with a logo, fired with food-grade glazes, and serve as unique packaging that doubles as a keepsake gift. While making them would be time-consuming, we’d have no manufacturer delays and a design that is truly our own. The main drawback is that ceramic breaks.
On the paper side, I’ve found heritage manufacturers here in France that can create nearly any kind of packaging. With the right protective layers, they could be food-grade, and we could create something that feels more like an artisanal seed packet or a small book.
The path forward seems to be less about finding a supplier and more about creating the solution ourselves. Whether it's the feel of ceramic or the rustle of custom paper, the goal is to create packaging as intentional as the coffee it holds. The search for the El Dorado of packaging continues – I’ve just realized we may have to build it ourselves.
Artwork: “Les Halles” by Léon Lhermitte. Photo taken by Benjamin Schwartz.