Düsseldorf, Germany — Home-compostable coffee pods were on display at K 2019 in a project that combined the effort of several plastics supplier partners.
The pods were molded at the booth of Campetella Robotic Center srl on a Netstal Elion 1200-510 injection molding machine.
Ladbergen, Germany-based Golden Compound GmbH supplied the compound, derived from the BioPBS bio-based polybutylene succinate semicrystalline polyester produced by MCPP Mitsubishi Chemical Performance Polymers.
Golden Compound Manager Reinhard Trumme stressed that BioPBS does not use oxydegradable additives to be compostable. And, unlike polylactic acid, BioPBS does not need to be collected and biologically degraded in industrial composting settings, with conditions of high temperature and moisture.
BioPBS can simply been thrown into a domestic composter, as it only needs moisture and bacteria to degrade, Trumme said.
"But should it go into an industrial plant for degradation; it degrades faster than PLA", Trumme said, adding that the material has received OK Compost certification from TüV Austria as a home-compostable material, something that helped it win a 2019 bioplastics innovation award from the Hürth, Germany-based Nova-Institut GmbH.
BioPBS contains up to 70 percent natural fiber from sunflower seed husks, according to Golden Compound, which was founded in 2014 and is a wholly owned subsidiary of SPC Sunflower Plastics Compound GmbH.
The company has production capacity of 3,000 metric tons of BioPBS compounds annually in Ladbergen.