Sealpod

Stainless steel coffee capsules / Source: Sealpod

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6 MINUTE READ

Nate Tyler

WHAT WE SAY:

The coffee capsule space is rife with waste, with one portion of plastic and aluminium-wrapped coffee making just one cup before it goes in the bin. The system needs to revisit the three Rs with some urgency, and Taiwanese brand Sealpod is leading the charge with its reusable capsules.

While not a perfectly waste-free system, the brand's range of steel capsules retains the convenience and quality of capsule coffee while heavily reducing the packaging waste that comes with it. What's more, we love how the reusability of one product – the coffee machine – can lead consumes to reuse others.

KEY FACTS:

Sealpod makes refillable and reusable stainless Steel coffee capsules for Nespresso Original line coffee machines; Nescafe Dolce Gusto machines; and Caffitaly, K-fee, and Cafissimo machines.
The pods are made from 304 food grade stainless steel, and are designed to replace the single-use, single-dose Aluminium and plastic-based capsules sold by the brands themselves.
Capsules can be bought individually or in sets, and are manually refillable in the home. Consumers can fill the capsules with any brand of coffee, allowing them to move away from the pre-prescribed variations usually compatible with individual machines. The pods can also be used with loose tea leaves. The effectiveness of the seal allows the capsules to be refilled ahead of time, meaning coffee is always ready to go when needed.
While the capsules themselves are entirely plastic free, Sealpod is unfortunately sold with a roster of plastic-based and non-recyclable attachments, including silicone lids, plastic spoons for coffee scooping, and an acrylic holder to place pods in while filling them.
The capsules can also be purchased alongside aluminium foil sticker lids to pressurise the brewing coffee, or Paper lids designed to be used with tea. The metal stickers can also be used with existing Nespresso Vertuoline pods to make them reusable, as Sealpod's steel capsules are not compatible with this style of machine.
Both the paper and aluminium stick-on lids use what is likely fossil fuel-based glue to adhere to the Sealpod capsule, reducing their recyclability and making the paper detrimental to the quality of compost.
If customers opt to switch their coffee machine, or change how they make their coffee, Sealpod capsules are recyclable, like all stainless steel. Otherwise, because of the metal's durability, the capsules can last as long as there’s a workable machine to put them in.
Sealpod is a private company started by Molly Liu and her sister Eli. Headquartered and manufactured in Taipei, Taiwan, the pods are sold through a network of distributors around the world, as well as through its own website.

Reusable coffee capsules / Source: Sealpod

The capsules can be used for coffee and loose tea brews / Source: Sealpod

DIVE DEEPER:

The majority of disposable coffee pods are made from plastic and aluminium, or a combination of both. Produced in their billions every year worldwide – estimates are as high as 59 billion - the pods are incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to recycle in kerbside facilities. This results in a colossal build up of waste that takes 500 years to decompose.
The problem is global. Between 27% and 40% of Americans owned or used a single-cup coffee maker in 2020, while in the UK 700 million capsules end up in landfill every year. In Brazil, one study found that only 11% of capsules were recycled in 2017, and we expect the real number is much lower. Regardless of how many capsules we go through, coffee pod waste totals 576,000 tonnes every year worldwide.
In recent years, claims have emerged that coffee pods actually save resources by reducing the overall use of coffee, which has a very high environmental impact. This has resulted in the heavily publicised message that capsule coffee is good for the planet. The study that makes this claim wasn’t peer reviewed, while another, peer reviewed study came to the opposite conclusion – that single-use coffee pods are much worse environmentally due to their constant production and packaging waste.
By switching to reusable pods, consumers can skip the whole debate, buying them once and reusing them for the lifetime of their machine – and hopefully beyond that, if their next one is compatible.
While the production of stainless steel produces 23.5 kilograms of CO2 per kilogram, once any product reaches a certain number of reuse thresholds, it surpasses single-use in terms of resource savings. To manufacture Nespresso pods, for example – the first system Sealpod was made to replace – approximately 9.03 kilograms of CO2e is produced for every kilogram of pods made. Using those numbers, if a Sealpod capsule is reused three times, it will have a lesser environmental impact compared to single-use aluminium pods.
While these numbers might not matter to consumers, they can still feel the cost savings of reusables and visually see how much less they’re throwing away every day. To facilitate global adoption, Sealpod has built up a network of distributors on every continent except Antarctica. These include Amazon and eBay in the US, Amazon and Maverick Coffee Co. in the UK, Crema Joe in Australia, and Urbanology in Africa.

"Although the coffee capsule system fulfills my coffee expectations, I was feeling guilty that I was making so much waste, spending so much money, and worst of all, I felt like being slaved by not having more options."

Molly Liu – Founder, Sealpod

Key Design Considerations:

Communicating cost

At USD 139 for a starter Family Pack – including 10 reusable capsules, 10 covers, one spoon, 100 aluminium sticker lids, an acrylic filling station, 10 silicone rings and one coffee sample – Sealpod doesn't come cheap. But neither do single-serve coffee machines and single-use capsules. While the initial monetary outlay may seem high, brands should focus on communicating the long-term savings that can be made, knowing that the single-serve consumer isn't necessarily on a tight budget to begin with.

Remove the plastic

We love Sealpod for the waste it's replacing, but the use of plastic holders, plastic filling stations, plastic spoons, and so on seems at odds with the brand's overall mission. Given the elevated nature of the single-serve coffee experience, brands looking to follow in its footsteps should prioritise a 100% plastic-free system. Think steel holders and spoons, and a beautifully crafted filling station that can take pride of place on the kitchen counter.