Jing An Shangri-La, West Shanghai Recycles with Nespresso

To provide at guests’ convenience, many guestrooms at Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts offer in-room espresso machines. Recently, Jing An Shangri-La, West Shanghai joined the Nespresso recycling effort to better protect the planet and also provide guests with their preferred caffeinated beverage.

Nespresso believes that each cup of coffee “has the potential to not only deliver a moment of pleasure but also restore, replenish and revive environmental and human resources.” In effect, a cup of coffee can create a greater value for society and the environment.

To follow this mission, hotel guests are encouraged to dispose their used Nespresso capsules in a special capsule recycling bin. At the end of each day, housekeeping collects capsules from guestrooms and stores them in designated boxes to be shipped to a recycling plant.

At the recycling plant, capsules are shredded, screened to separate coffee from aluminum and filtered multiple times. Then the aluminum is sent to an aluminum refinery, and the leftover coffee grounds are collected for recycling. Recycled coffee grounds can be used for many purposes, such as natural fertilizer or as an energy source for domestic heating.

By 2020, in cooperation with hotels like Jing An Shangri-La, West Shanghai, Nespresso aims to provide 100 percent sustainably-sourced coffee, sustainably-managed aluminum and carbon ‘insetting.’ Unlike traditional carbon offsetting in a different location with unrelated workers, ‘insetting’ compensates carbon within the company’s own business value chain, which also creates shared value for the farmers.

We are glad to be a part of the goal and hope to help Nespresso achieve it.