Coffee Talk Magazine - Letters to the Editor on "Kicking the Can"

Letters to the Editor

On “Kicking the Can”

Good after­noon.
We are a sub­scriber to Coffee Talk Magazine and we have noticed the “kick­ing” around of steel cans in favor of poly­bags. I’m writ­ing, not because we are a can man­u­fac­turer in the United States who pro­vides tin­plated steel pack­ag­ing to the cof­fee indus­try, but because you may be mis­lead­ing a very envi­ron­men­tally con­scious group of con­sumers to believe that bags are their best pack­ag­ing choice. Showing smashed and soiled cans on your cover was a slap at our indus­try and our material.

Steel is the most recy­cled prod­uct in the US and has an infi­nite life cycle. Steel can be made into another item after recy­cling with­out loss of qual­ity and uses less energy than mak­ing new. Separation from other waste mate­ri­als by mag­net makes the recy­cling process highly effi­cient and lower in cost. There is no bet­ter pack­age for shelf appeal and for preser­va­tion of freshness.

The foils, plas­tic valves, and lin­ers of cof­fee bags make them less recy­clable or not recy­clable. The paper/poly blend excludes cof­fee bags from being con­sid­ered part of paper recy­cling. Cans can be reused. Bags are not. A num­ber of plas­tic con­tain­ers can­not be recy­cled into sec­ondary prod­ucts. Even among those that can be (#1 and #2), once the sec­ondary prod­ucts are used the plas­tic can­not recy­cled again. A good resource for sup­port of the steel can facts that I have stated is this web­site http://steelrecyclingfacts.com/. As a cof­fee mag­a­zine, I’m not sure what is gained by show­ing a bias toward a par­tic­u­lar pack­ag­ing choice. It is not the same as the full page ads claim­ing that steel can is not a good con­tem­po­rary choice. All is fair in marketing.

Donna Sichette
Marketing Specialist
Independent Can Company
1300 Brass Mill Road
Belcamp, MD 21017

POSTED BY:
Ryan D. Huether
Vice President of Business Development
Independent Can Company
http://www.westernspecialty.com
6/4/12


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