Recycap, a startup based in Valencia, has secured €400k in funding from Veos Venture to make recycling coffee capsules simple and easy through its innovative technology. While coffee pods and capsule machines have made it convenient for people to brew quality coffee at home, they have serious environmental consequences. It’s reported that 4.9 billion used aluminium coffee capsules end up in landfills yearly, taking 500 years to degrade in nature. Recycap has developed a solution using tech to recycle capsules in a simple, automated way.
Founded in 2022 by Eduardo Pérez, Vicente Oller and Constantino LLobell Durá, Recycap enables customers to recycle their aluminium and plastic coffee capsules at home or office dispose of the empty capsules in regular recycling bins via its Recycap Automated Coffee Technology (REACT™) system.
The technology facilitates the removal of coffee capsule grounds, making it easier to recycle aluminium capsules. In addition, Recycap is working with leading coffee retailers and brands to create point-of-sale aluminium coffee capsule recycling programs.
Recycap plan to manufacture commercial-sized Recycap recycling devices, begin commercial operations and create other industry partnerships with the newly secured funding. The company also plans to develop the first home coffee machine with fully integrated REACT technology.
The coffee pod market is growing rapidly, with 39k capsules produced every minute worldwide and over 5 million capsules used every day in Spain alone. However, only 10% of these are currently being recycled, which means that almost 100 tons of capsules with coffee inside are sent to landfill every day without being recycled.