Some places have Keurig machines. 40 million households in the US Single-serve coffee brewing systems, which allow consumers to brew just one cup of coffee at a time by inserting a pod into a slot and pressing a button, have surged in popularity since the early 2000s.
Inevitably, this creates a lot of waste.
Every cup of java coffee brewed creates a mystery. What should we do with the coffee pods that produce them? First of all, is it recyclable? For Keurig, the answer is actually no. The company’s disposable coffee pods, also known as K-cups, are made from polypropylene plastic, which experts warn is not as recyclable as consumers think. Two of the country’s largest recycling companies said they do not accept K-cup pods, and one environmental group said that if all the K-cup pods in landfills around the world were lined up side by side, You will travel comfortably around the Earth 10 times.
A new coffee pod company claims to have developed a solution to Keurig’s plastic waste problem. Launched in September, Cambio Roasters offers Keurig-compatible coffee pods made from aluminum, which, unlike plastic, is infinitely recyclable. Cambio is led by a team of former Keurig employees, including founder and CEO Kevin Hartley, who was Chief Innovation Officer at Keurig Green Mountain (formerly the company name). “I think this is the most exciting innovation in coffee since the K-Cup,” Hartley said during a press conference on Cambio’s launch day.
But experts aren’t sure Cambio understands how big of a problem K-cups pose for curbside recycling systems.
“Plastic is actually not a good choice,” said Jeremy Pare, a visiting professor of business and environment at Duke University’s Nicholas School for the Environment. But even with all its advantages, aluminum “will still have problems.”
One of the reasons it is difficult to create truly recyclable packaging options for nearly all consumer products is that the U.S. recycling landscape is severely fragmented. “There are more than 10,000 recycling systems in the United States,” said Pare, who is also a member of the Plastic Pollution Working Group at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability. “But at the same time, only a quarter of the population in the United States has access to recycling.” (Pare lives in a community just outside Augusta, Maine, that has no formal recycling program.) In the United States, the question is: Whether recycling is possible can only be accurately answered at the local level.
The best coffee for the planet may not be coffee
Another issue is the plastic construction of most K-cup pods. Sustainability concerns have followed the Keurig brand closely as it has expanded. (Once a small startup, Keurig was acquired by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in 2006, and in 2018 Keurig Green Mountain merged with Dr Pepper Snapple to become Keurig Dr Pepper.) Keurig began selling K-cup pods. made of polypropylene In 2016, we have the following goals: Making K-Cup Pods 100% “recyclable.” But the company has struggled to promote its recyclability. 2018 California Resident sued Keurig Keurig claims that K-Cup pods can be recycled after removing the foil lid and rinsing or discarding the coffee grounds. Agrees to pay $10 million in class action settlement. And in September of this year, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Keurig with falsely claiming pot.Can be recycled effectively.” (Keurig settled the claim by agreeing to pay a $1.5 million fine.)
Hartley, who left Keurig in 2017, knew consumers wanted plastic-free K-cup options, and after years of prototyping and testing, he and his team chose aluminum as an easy-to-recycle alternative. Aluminum is also impervious to oxygen, causing coffee to lose its flavor over time. “Every time we brew a cup of coffee, it tastes exactly as the roastmaster intended,” Hartley said.
Cambio Roasters / Chrisman Studio
Cambio isn’t the first single-use coffee company to choose to ditch plastic or invest in circularity. Nespresso, the popular single-serve coffee company owned by the Nestlé Group, makes its capsules out of aluminum. over 30 years. In 2020, Nespresso announced that pods will be created as follows: 80% recycled aluminumThey claim that the global recycling rate is: 32%.
However, Nespresso pods only work with Nespresso machines. Because the Cambio coffee pods are designed to work with Keurig models, Hartley hopes to give consumers what they want “without having to buy a new beer.”
Cambio also allows users to open the lid and throw away the waste before recycling. nespresso pod The lid is difficult to remove.The company instructs users to recycle the pods as-is. However, Fords are only approved for curbside recycling. New York City and jersey cityThis is if the designated recycler cleans it before reprocessing it. (Nespresso consumers can also mail used pods to the manufacturer for recycling or drop them off at a Nespresso store.)
Unfortunately, swapping plastic for aluminum doesn’t automatically solve the K-cup pods’ recyclability crisis, experts say. Whatever it’s made of, what prevents coffee pods from getting a second life is their size.
After collection, recyclables are sorted in facilities known as materials recovery facilities (MRFs). MRFs are not equipped to collect small items. The general rule of thumb is that you can’t handle anything. Smaller than a credit card — So the little things you put in your recycling bin often end up in landfills. “K-cups are so small that they fall through the machines at many recycling facilities,” Pare said. “Therefore,” he says, “there is no good way to recycle coffee pods other than to separate them individually” from the waste stream.
Cambio’s approach to solving this problem is two-fold. First, the company says it wants to allow consumers to stack used K-Cup pods together and then pinch them shut, to overcome the size requirements of many recycling facilities. Three or more used K-cup pods should produce pieces of aluminum large enough to pass through a recycling facility’s machines, Hartley says. (These instructions do not currently appear on Cambio’s packaging or website.)
Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
Cambio says it’s also developing a device that would make it easier to stack and stow used K-cups. “Think of this device as an easy way for consumers to string their cups together and then throw them in the recycling bin,” Hartley said. He added that the company has filed a patent for a second-generation Cambio pod that can be “glued” together after use.
“I don’t think the aluminum pods are a meaningful improvement,” said Jan Dell, a chemical engineer and environmental non-profit founder, noting that their small size is a barrier to them being accepted and sorted through curbside recycling systems. “Think of the pods like confetti. There’s no backup.”
Cambio disagrees with Dell’s characterization of the switch to aluminum, pointing out that currently, by default, single-use plastic pods are not recycled, while aluminum can be recycled endlessly. “For Cambio and consumers, these two facts are meaningful.” Hartley also shared that work is “ongoing” to ensure Cambio’s compatibility with national recycling programs. The company plans to run tests using the MRF in select markets “as soon as possible.”
In response to a request for comment, a Keurig Dr Pepper spokesperson said, “We know consumers want simplicity and reduced waste.” They shared that the company has not only “lightweighted the pods to reduce the amount of plastic used,” but also “increased our recycling options,” including a soon-to-be-launched program that customers can mail in. I used the pods in my Keurig for recycling. The spokesperson also said the company was “continually exploring” more “sustainable packaging” options.
Dell leads The Last Beach Cleanup, a non-profit organization focused on preventing plastic pollution. She said the ultimate solution to Keurig’s plastic footprint is a product that “doesn’t have to collect anything from customers again,” such as fiber-based pods that can be composted along with the scraps.
Keurig is currently testing a plant-based pod format that doesn’t use plastic or aluminum, and the company expects it to be certified compostable, according to a Keurig Dr Pepper spokesperson. Hartley, who has been developing the product for several years, called it “an incredible innovation.”
However, this coffee puck is not yet sold, A whole new machine is needed run. “It’s going to be a long time before the United States sheds 40 to 50 million brewers and buys 40 to 50 million new brewers,” Hartley said. “I’m not going to publicly reveal how much we spent to start from nothing and make 50 million American households love Keurig,” he said, referring to his time with Keurig. “But this is a huge undertaking and will take decades.”
In a 2015 interview with the Atlantic Founder of K Cup “Sometimes I feel bad that I did something like that.” To the market disposable coffee brewer Unless products are somehow significantly reimagined and redesigned, their environmental impact will also increase. Keurigs and Nespresso machines are marketed as a combination of convenience and luxury, and this combination is likely to continue to attract interest in new market segments.
But environmentally conscious coffee brewers can take comfort in the knowledge that they don’t need a Keurig or Nespresso machine to brew one cup of coffee at a time. In fact, any coffee maker can be single-serve, using only the water and coffee grounds you need. No pods needed. All you need is a filter.
