March 2026 Update: Light Coffee's current choice of retail coffee bags
- Feb 28
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 2
Please kindly note our current NEW FILTER RETAIL “grey” coffee bags is technically classified as conditional recycling:
- The PET valve would need to be removed for recycling through Kerbside Recycling
- The main body of the bag is made from soft plastics, which can only be recycled through designated soft plastic recycling:
As of August 2025, the retailer-led Soft Plastic Taskforce (Woolworths, Coles, Aldi) pilot collections were underway in over 500 selected stores in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Newcastle. You can find participating Woolworths locations on their website:
We know it’s not perfect, and it does require a little extra effort. But if you’re able to separate the valve and drop the soft plastic at a collection point, it helps keep the material in circulation a little longer.
Small as we are, we still hope to continue making thoughtful choices that lessen our impact in every way we can. Like you, we truly care about protecting the planet and doing our part — however small it may be.
If you’ve been with us from the start, you would be more than aware of Eva’s chase for the “less bad” packaging bag. From when we started in 2017, we switched from foil bags to soft plastic recyclable bags in 2019, and then again in 2023 to Certified Home Compostable bags.
We were genuinely happy with the home compostable bags. However, in 2025 it came to our attention through a couple of our supplied cafés that the brown home compostable bags we were using had lost their ability to provide a proper barrier to oxygen and moisture. The coffee had became stale within 2 weeks, which essentially means the beans were left in an open bag exposed to moisture and elements.
Since then, we have monitored closely between the two different bag types, going back to soft plastics isn’t ideal, especially while Australia’s soft plastic recycling infrastructure is still absent. Our hope has always been to share the beautiful flavours of coffee, grown and nurtured by farmers whose crops traveled across the oceans to reach us. And so we have decided to take one step back for now and return to the freshest soft plastic packaging we had once sourced.
Good news is that as of August 2025, the retailer-led Soft Plastic Taskforce (Woolworths, Coles, Aldi) pilot collections were underway in over 500 selected stores in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Newcastle. You can find participating Woolworths locations on their website: https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/discover/sustainability/recycling/soft-plastic
Hopefully there is one that is not too far from you, and we pray the trial will eventuate to a more reliable system soon.
Having said all that, it meant we had the blank slate to redesign our bags! One major design change we’ve also made, instead of using stainless steel pin to stable our card labels, we have opted instead for an Australian-made sticker, still printed in-house, on demand (to reduce wastage from minimum print runs)
Keeping the same beautiful ink washes by our dear friend Mark Rose: turning each unique wash combinations on its side with the text and names floating across like clouds in the sky ☁️🤍✨
Our new stickers are:
Made in Australia
Food grade certified (EC1935/2004 & FDA 175.105)
FSC® certified paper made from bagasse (sugarcane pulp making it compostable)
100% plastic-free (including the backing)
BPA & BPS free
Coloured using water-based inks
What about the green paper? The FSC® Mix Certified card stock from Europe, made from cotton fibres and recycled content card stock? Yes we have still kept a token of our beautiful green paper we have all come to love, as a stamp mark: crafted heartily by Light!
Choosing a sustainable option is never an easy task. There are always pros and cons to weigh. We hope you like our new bags... and thank you once again for caring, and coming on the journey with us. We still hope to upgrade toward a more sustainable packaging solution again soon :)
< Read our previous "packaging" posts from 2023 and 2019 for the full journey! >
