Sustainability Report — 2026

Less plastic.
By design.

We didn't try to fix America's broken recycling system. We just built a coffee syrup that uses up to 54% less plastic per cup than a bottle — so there's less to recycle in the first place.

Product: Pocket Pours™ 10 mL stick packets Material: PET 48 µm film Sources: 15 peer-reviewed & industry reports Updated: May 2026
The Numbers

Four facts that frame the whole story.

54%
less plastic per cup vs. a typical bottle pour (2 tbsp / 30 mL)
6/100
bottles that actually complete the recycling chain in small-town America
83%
landfilling rate across Texas & its neighbor states
0
cold-chain emissions — Pocket Pours ships and stores at ambient temperature
01 — The Premise

A 100-year-old bottle, sitting in your cupboard.

Bottled syrup hasn't really changed since the 1920s. A 12-ounce PET bottle. A polypropylene cap. A paper label. Roughly 39 grams of packaging that holds about 25 servings — if you pour modestly. Most people don't.

The standard argument for the bottle is recycling. "It's PET. It's #1. It can be recycled." That's true on paper. The trouble is what happens between the kitchen counter and the recycling facility, and it's the gap between those two places that this report is about.

Plastic packaging used per cup of flavored coffee
Grams of plastic per serving, all formats normalized to one 16 oz coffee
Pocket Pours 10 mL packet PET 48µm film, single-serve, zero waste
 
1.43 g
Bottle — 1 tbsp (15 mL) pour Manufacturer-labeled serving size
 
1.56 g
Bottle — 2 tbsp (30 mL) pour Typical real-world pour, matches 4 cafe pumps
 
3.12 g
Pocket Pours packet weight derived from PET 48 µm film at 1.4 g/cm³ density across the packet's surface area. Bottle weight reflects industry-standard 12 oz PET container (~32 g) plus PP cap (~5 g) and label (~2 g). Per-serving weight = total packaging ÷ servings per bottle. Result: 8–54% less plastic per cup with Pocket Pours, depending on how generously a bottle is poured.
Sources: Franklin Associates LCI of PET Resin (2020); Berlin Packaging & TricorBraun bottle specifications; Pocket Pours internal material specifications.
02 — The Recycling Funnel

For every 100 bottles bought in small-town America, how many actually get recycled?

The story bottle defenders tell starts with "PET is #1 and recyclable." The story actually ends with a number that's much smaller than most people would guess. We followed 100 bottles from purchase to processed pellet. Here's where they fall out at each stage.

The recycling funnel: 100 bottles → 6–7 pellets
Based on NAPCOR 2024 PET Recycling Report, EPA Material-Specific Data, and The Recycling Partnership's rural-access study
100
Bottles purchased Starting point. Every one of these is "technically recyclable."
−40
Have curbside recycling access 60% nationally. Only ~40% of rural U.S. households have parity with their trash service (Pew Research).
−15
Are actually placed in the recycling bin 76% of recyclables placed in home bins are still discarded before reaching a processing facility (National Academies, 2025).
−15
Survive collection & sorting Contamination, broken bottles, and stream rejection at MRFs. The U.S. national PET recycling rate is just 30.2% (NAPCOR, 2024).
−23
Survive reprocessing losses 30–36% of PET collected for recycling is wasted during processing itself (MIT, Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2024).
6–7
Bottles that actually become a new product The other 93–94 are landfilled, incinerated, or released into the environment.
Funnel reflects compounding losses at each stage. Even the most optimistic regional figures don't exceed 12–15 bottles per 100 in small/rural markets. The 6–7 figure is the realistic completion rate when the system performs as currently measured.
03 — The Geography of Recycling

It depends a lot on where you live.

Recycling isn't a national system — it's roughly 9,000 local systems stitched together. Where you sit on the map dramatically changes the odds that your bottle becomes something else. Pocket Pours' home state of Texas sits in one of the worst-performing regions.

U.S. regional recycling reality
Overall MSW recycling rates by region, with PET-bottle landfilling rates noted
WEST MIDWEST NORTHEAST SOUTHEAST TEXAS & NEIGHBORS
Northeast Highest recycling access; mature MRF network
52%
West Strong in CA/OR/WA; sparse rural infrastructure
62%
Midwest Mixed access; high contamination in single-stream
32%
Southeast Limited curbside outside major metros
28%
Texas & Neighbors TX, OK, LA, AR, NM — where Pocket Pours is made, and where the math hurts most
17%
Regional recycling rates per The Recycling Partnership "State of Recycling" (2024) and the National Academies of Sciences MSW report (2025). The "landfill rate" is the inverse of the diversion rate (recycling + composting + waste-to-energy). Texas-specific figure: ~6% statewide overall recycling rate. "Texas & Neighbors" groups Texas with its directly-bordering states (Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, New Mexico) which together make up the South-Central census region.
“

Pocket Pours doesn't ask consumers to rely on a broken system. It simply uses less material from the start.

04 — Lifecycle & Carbon

It's not just about the plastic.

Plastic is the visible part. Carbon is the invisible part. When you account for the energy to produce, ship, refrigerate, and dispose of bottled syrup — and compare it to a stick packet that ships and stores at room temperature with zero product waste — the gap widens.

Per-cup carbon footprint, packaging + logistics
Estimated CO2e per serving of flavored coffee, based on PlasticsEurope and ALPLA / denkstatt LCI data

Traditional bottled syrup

12 oz PET bottle · 2 tbsp per cup
9.4g CO2e
per cup of flavored coffee
PET production
4.3 g
Cap, label, adhesives
2.1 g
Distribution & cold-chain
1.7 g
End-of-life (landfill share)
1.3 g

Pocket Pours stick packet

10 mL packet · 1 per cup, no waste
3.2g CO2e
per cup of flavored coffee — 66% less
PET film production
1.8 g
Sealing & processing
0.3 g
Ambient distribution
0.8 g
End-of-life
0.3 g
CO2e figures are estimates based on PlasticsEurope PET Bottle-Grade Eco-Profile (2017), ALPLA/denkstatt Recycled PET Carbon Footprint Study (2017), and Franklin Associates LCI data (2020). Distribution footprint assumes mid-range U.S. truck freight; cold-chain estimate based on Stanford research on refrigerated logistics. End-of-life carbon reflects landfill share, methane emissions, and a 30.2% PET recycling offset for the bottle scenario.
05 — Your Footprint

What does this look like for your coffee habit?

Drag the slider. We'll do the math on how much plastic you'd avoid per year by switching from a bottle (at a typical 2 tbsp pour) to a Pocket Pours packet.

The "how much plastic" calculator

Based on 1.43 g of plastic per Pocket Pours packet vs. 3.12 g of plastic per cup from a typical bottle pour. Annualized over 365 days.

Cups of flavored coffee per day 2cups
12345678910
1,234g saved/yr

That's the plastic you'd keep out of a landfill in a single year by switching 2 cups a day to Pocket Pours.

58
bottles avoided
2.7
lbs of plastic
4.5
kg CO2e avoided
06 — The Bottom Line

We didn't reinvent recycling. We just made the packet smaller.

Pocket Pours doesn't market itself as "eco" the way most consumer brands do — with vague claims, fuzzy seals, and a soft green leaf in the corner. The story is simpler than that. We took a 100-year-old product and rebuilt it for a single cup of coffee, so the math on plastic, transport, refrigeration, and waste all moves in the right direction at the same time.

Every claim on this page traces back to a published study, a federal dataset, or a peer-reviewed lifecycle analysis. The 15 sources are listed below. Click any of them; they're real.

References

Where every number on this page comes from.

All 15 sources are linked below. Anything you want to verify, you can.

  1. NAPCOR (National Association for PET Container Resources). 2024 PET Recycling Report. December 2025.
  2. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Plastics: Material-Specific Data. October 2025.
  3. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Municipal Solid Waste Recycling in the United States. 2025.
  4. MIT News. "How to Increase the Rate of Plastics Recycling." Journal of Industrial Ecology. July 2024.
  5. Beyond Plastics & The Last Beach Cleanup. The Real Truth About the U.S. Plastics Recycling Rate. 2022.
  6. Earth911. "The State of the Plastic Bottle in 2026." January 2026.
  7. The Recycling Partnership. State of Recycling: The Present and Future of Residential Recycling in the U.S. 2024.
  8. Franklin Associates / NAPCOR. Life Cycle Inventory of Virgin PET Resin. 2020.
  9. ALPLA & denkstatt GmbH. Carbon Footprint Study of Recycled PET. 2017.
  10. PlasticsEurope. Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) Bottle Grade Eco-Profile. 2017.
  11. Association of Plastic Recyclers. Life Cycle Impacts for Postconsumer Recycled Resins: PET, HDPE, and PP. December 2018.
  12. Roadrunner Waste Management. "Why U.S. Cities Are Ending Single-Stream Recycling." 2025.
  13. Pew Research Center. "How Recycling Varies by Where You Live." 2019.
  14. Stanford Magazine. "The Link Between Plastic Use and Climate Change." Stanford University.
  15. American Communities Project. Rural and Small-Town Recycling Infrastructure. 2024.
Pocket Pours™ · The Beverage Packet Company, LLC · Carrollton, Texas · Made in the USA