ACTIONS
In conjunction with its customers and partners, Swiss Post develops logistics services that favour the circular economy (www.post.ch/circular-economy). One example of this is the collection solution for partner companies, “Recycling at Home”. The service is very simple: members of the public place their used aluminium coffee capsules in a recycling bag. When the bag is full, they put it in their mailbox.
The mail carrier collects it and takes it away. Swiss Post Logistics then takes the collected bags to the Groupe Barec recycling centre in Moudon, where the coffee grounds are removed from the aluminium. The metal is melted down and processed into new products. The coffee grounds are mixed with other organic material and fermented into biogas to generate electricity and heat.
The fermentation residue can be used as natural fertiliser. The collection solution is now available for various products, including PET bottles, routers and even carbon dioxide cylinders.
The collection solutions offer private customers the highest level of convenience. Customers do not have to take the used goods to a recycling container, but can have them collected instead. This leads to an increase in the return of goods that can be recycled or made functional again.
