Let’s address the plastic elephant in the room — our coffee sachets. When Beforeyouspeak launched, we wanted to provide a convenient, travel-friendly solution for high performers on the go. A lot’s changed since 2017 and — despite best efforts — we have struggled to find a viable alternative to our sachets. One that avoids greenwashing and actually provides a sustainable solution.

Like a medicine capsule, our coffee sachets ensure the right ratio and dosage of active ingredients. It also ensures delivery of your delicious coffee in a ‘food safe’ way, ultimately staying fresh for longer. But we’re not here to make excuses, we need to do better for our community and our planet. Below you’ll find our achievements so far, and our plans for the future.

What we’ve done

We have made some big steps forward to eliminate unnecessary packaging, including:

40% reduction in cardboard for all 30-serves

100% recyclable Complex packaging

Exploration of upcoming sustainable packaging options

What we're going to do

Prioritise plastic free solutions in future planing

Decrease our carbon footprint across all areas

Strive towards zero waste packaging

Packaging FAQs

Why does your coffee need to be in a sachet? 

Like a medicine capsule, our coffee sachets ensure the right ratio and dosage of active ingredients. It also ensures delivery of your delicious coffee in a ‘food safe’ way, ultimately staying fresh for longer.

Our premium active ingredients require limited air and moisture exposure, so at this stage, individual sachets are the best way for us to ensure the quality, freshness and shelf life required for our blends.

Why not biodegradable / compostable sachets? 

Whilst we explore options to be plastic free in the future, we are determined to find a sustainable solution that avoids greenwashing. Unfortunately, even though a plastic can be classified as biodegradable, many simply breakdown into further micro plastics. The fragments are usually so small they’re invisible to the naked eye, but still exist in our landfills, water ways and soils.

Many compostable plastics are only suitable for industrial composts, which reach very high temperatures. This means they’re unlikely to break down sufficiently in home composts. Even those certified as home compostable are assessed under perfect lab conditions, which aren’t easily achieved in the backyard.

We hope that with advancements in technology and local material availability, we will be able to convert to certified home compostable sachets in the near future. Ensuring that they still provide the safety, freshness and shelf life required for our active ingredients — whilst being genuinely sustainable.

Can I buy the coffee in bulk? 

The nature of our active ingredients makes it difficult to package in bulk due to the need for limited air and moisture exposure — something as simple as a damp spoon being used to scoop the coffee would cause clumping and impact the quality of the powder. We also risk the heavier active ingredients settling at the bottom of the tub. At this stage, individual sachets are the best way for us to ensure the quality, freshness, shelf life, dose and serving size.

We are working to re-engineer the way we blend our coffee so that we can offer our blends in a bulk tub, but this isn’t a process we are able to rush. This innovation will be a game-changer for us as and our consumers, so we want to partner with our suppliers to get it right.

Are your Coffee boxes & Complex tubs recyclable? 

Yes! Our updated, range-wide outer packaging is all 100% recyclable.

In addition, our 30 serve Coffee boxes contain 40% less cardboard overall than our previous packs, and can be recycled in your household recycling bin. 

How are you reducing your shipping footprint? 

We strive to ensure all of the card inserts, outer packaging boxes and protective paper filling used to ship your order are fully recyclable and sourced in a sustainable way.

Our pouch-style shippers used for small orders are 100% home compostable. Our new packaging range is also up to 33% lighter per item compared to our previous packaging. This contributes to a significant reduction in total shipping weight and an improvement in our overall carbon output.

Every parcel we send within Australia through Australia Post is carbon neutral and you can learn more about Australia Post’s commitment to the environment via their website.

To learn more about how our international shipping partner DHL is working to decrease their carbon footprint, head to their sustainability page here.