The Environmental Tragedy Behind Your Keurig
Whose office or home does not have a Keurig, or pod-based coffee machine?Americans do love their Keurig system, and 1 in 3 home owns one. It is so practical and easy to use, and you can drink as many flavors of coffee or tea as you’d like within seconds at the press of a button. But those little individual K-cups are having a disastrous effect on our environment.
The K-Cups are actually non-recyclable and non biodegradable, and they all end up in landfills. According to a 2014 article, we used enough K-Cups to wrap around the earth almost 12 times in 2013 only. That’s a whopping 8.3 billion K-cups, in one year alone! The inventor of the Keurig has admitted to the media that he regrets coming up with the idea, as he now sees the extent of the plastic waste he has created. He doesn’t even own one!
So while the Keurig system is extremely practical, quick, and easy to clean, it is a nightmare for the environment. Each pod is plastic that will take millions of years to degrade—if ever— and will continue to pile up in landfills and the ocean, will probably end up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or any other Garbage Patch, and will likely end up killing wildlife. All in the name of low-quality convenience.
Green Mountain only makes 5% of its current cups out of recyclable plastic. The rest of them are made up of a #7 composite plastic, which is very hard to recycle in most places. And for the small few that are recyclables, the aluminum lid must be separated from the cup, which also must be emptied of its wet grounds, for the materials to make it through the recycling process. Even then, chances are the pod won’t be recycled because it’s too small.
Nespresso is very popular over in Europe or Australia (who wouldn’t get wooed by George Clooney?), and they already have recyclable or biodegradable versions of this single-serve pod, so it is possible to be more eco-friendly. For now, the big corporate powers at Keurig don’t really want to make a change, as their sales are still increasing and the market demands more and more of these pods.
Keurig does sell a reusable coffee filter, which is good for homes but probably not ideal for offices. But then, might as well just get a regular coffee machine, right?! The whole point of the Keurig is the convience of not cleaning it so often and of having numerous flavors to chose from.
So next time you feel tempted to brew yourself a quick cup of macchiato using the Keurig, think twice! I’d advise sticking with a good old drip coffee maker or a French press, and compost the coffee grinds. You will have limited impact on our environment and your coffee will probably be even more tasteful!
“Kill the K-Cup, before it kills us”
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