Coffee waste management. A case study

For some years now, organizations and countries have been concerned with waste management. This has resulted in laws that held producers responsible for the recovery of the products that they produce when these reach the end of their lifetime. Although the existing legislation does not include all types of wastes, some producers have been making efforts in adapting the supply chain management to the activities associated with recovering waste produced by the products that they are responsible for because they feel socially motivated to give an ecological image and/or they want to prepare for the legislation implementation that they foresee is going to be published. The case study presented here is a pilot study supporting the decision developed in an organization responsible for roasting and distributing coffee in Portugal with the objective of achieving a model of coffee waste collection and transportation that is efficient and reduces the environmental impact.