There were many reasons to do so. Firstly, it was to enable you to easily make decisions about which specialty coffee to buy (without browsing through multiple options), thanks to a unique colour system that we devised. Since we love art, each coffee flavour profile and colour will have art associated with it for your ease and convenience. Most importantly, we changed our packaging material to LDPE (low density polyethylene) which is easily recyclable and keeps the coffee fresher for a longer duration. In order to make this decision we looked into various aspects of recycling from the materials that were available for packaging to studying the actual facilities that were predominantly used across the country to recycle different types of material, along with the different ways that waste is sent to recycling centres.

Our new pouches are recyclable but not biodegradable.

Most Indian municipalities collect and segregate trash. The good news is that anything made with LDPE can directly go to a recycling centre which are the most predominant recycling centres in the country. So, if you would like to recycle the coffee pack yourself, your municipality will do it for you, or you can take the pouches to your nearest recycling centre or you can bring the used pouches to a Blue Tokai Coffee café in your locality.

Your convenience is our utmost priority, which is where our unique colour coding comes into place. We’ve colour coded each specialty coffee to represent different flavour profiles like bold and bitter, chocolatey and nutty, delicate and complex, fruity and punchy, balanced, and experimental (as shown above). Eg. If you like dark, bitter coffee, the coffees in the green pouch with the Mandana art is for you. 

Not at all! Each coffee pouch will clearly mention the range of flavours, so it will be easy for you to choose the ones you enjoy.

All the perennial and seasonal Blue Tokai coffees will use this new packaging. However, we may also retain the brown Kraft paper pouches for limited edition products.

At Blue Tokai, we have always loved art as much as we do specialty coffee. The new packaging has illustrations inspired from various Indian regional artforms like Gond, Mandana, Mata Ni Pachedi, Madhubani, Pithora and Warli. 

We are always on the hunt for more sustainable options as packaging technology evolves. We’ve spoken to some packaging companies who say that they are working on even more recyclable and biodegradable solutions; and we will be in constant touch with them to see how that development is going. Note that these changes do take a while. For now, we have found the best solution there is for recycling packaging in India. In case our packaging changes in the future, you will be the first to know. 

Yes, we have partnered with Landbell GreenForest Solutions which offers Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) services and environmental compliance for plastic waste, e-waste and waste batteries. LGFS is a Joint Venture between the Landbell Group and GreenForest Solutions GmbH (GFS).