With each of our filter coffee and whole bean annual editions, Coffee of the Year and Selection of the Year, we support people in the countries of coffee origin with community projects as part of our overarching commitment to sustainability.

For example, in Ayarza, Guatemala, one of the growing regions of this year's Selection of the Year edition, we support families during harvest time by setting up kindergartens for younger children and camps for older children. Additional health, nutrition and education programs are designed to improve local living conditions and open up new perspectives.

Melitta’s coffee range is being gradually expanded with the addition of certified sustainable and responsibly grown coffees. For example, the BellaCrema^® range now includes a coffee made from 100 percent certified organic beans. Melitta Professional Coffee Solutions has also expanded its range of sustainable products with the Fairtrade range Mondo Blu Espresso and Melitta^® Cioccolata Bio Fair Chocolate.

In 2020, we launched a project together with 4C Services to improve the living and working conditions of people involved in coffee farming in Colombia. The project aims to help up to 1,000 people on small coffee farms achieve higher yields from sustainably grown coffee by introducing improved agricultural practices and facilitating market access – thus helping to improve their living conditions.

In 2020, we launched a circular economy project in Brazil together with the Hanns R. Neumann Foundation. The aim is to reuse the organic waste generated by coffee cultivation, processing, roasting, and consumption by establishing a recycling system, thereby creating additional income opportunities in the growing regions.

Our products under the Toppits^® brand are already made from at least 35 percent recycled resources. By 2025, they are to be produced exclusively from recycled or renewable raw materials and capable of being fully recycled or composted.

Swirl^® garbage bags consist of 80% recycled plastic, of which at least half comes from post-consumer recyclates. They are expected to be 100% integrated into the materials cycle by 2025. The “Sacco Verde” bin liners of the Italian brand Domopak Spazzy are made from 100% post-consumer recyclate. Moreover, all Domopak Spazzy products are already made from recycled polyethylene. This saves 50% of CO2 emissions compared to virgin material.

In cooperation with Yunus Social Business Fund gGmbH, we have set up the company “Vishuddh Recycle Pvt. Ltd.” in the Indian megacity Bangalore. This social business converts plastic waste into recyclate which is then used to produce our garbage bags. The resulting profits are reinvested and used to improve the living conditions and prospects of so-called waste pickers in Bangalore.

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Swirl^® vacuum cleaner bags bearing the Pro Nature label are made from 50 percent recycled materials. This not only enables valuable materials to be reused, but also means that fewer resources are required for production.

Our filter papers are made from FSC^®-certified pulp and – depending on the product category – also carry additional certifications, such as the Blue Angel, NF and Nordic Swan. In this way, we support sustainable forest management around the world.

The extraction system at our filter paper production plant is a world first and an all-rounder: it saves around 60 percent of the energy previously required, reduces the amount of residual dust produced, and decreases CO2 emissions by around 1,200 metric tons a year.

Developed largely in-house, the system sucks up the paper residues in our coffee filter plant and feeds them back into the production process. In this way, we not only save 10,000 metric tons of paper waste per year, but also recover 28,000 metric tons of paper dust, which is recycled into briquettes.

Water plays an important role in the production of filter paper – as a transport medium, to dissolve pulp, as seal water, or for rinsing. To save water and reduce the amount of waste water, we catch it, filter it, and feed it back into the production process.

To ensure that noise does not negatively impact the quality of our lives, we are working on making our fully automatic coffee machines some of the quietest on the market. The international institute Quiet Mark, which promotes the reduction of noise in everyday life, has already honored three of our coffee machines: the Melitta^® Barista TS Smart^®, the Melitta^® Barista T Smart^®, and the Melitta^® CI Touch^®.

The Melitta^® EPOS^® filter coffeemaker is designed in such a way that – should the worst happen – more extensive repairs are both possible and economical. A corresponding repair service was set up when the machine was launched. We intend to extend this offer to other small devices in the coming years. Repair services are already offered for our fully automatic coffee machines, which were rated “very good” by Stiftung Warentest in 2021.