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It's no secret to us that coffee picks us up in the morning, but does your instinct benefit from a cup of coffee? Tony Spitz from Buzz60 has the details.
Buzz60
Like many Americans, 29-year-old Tiffany Mooney uses a one-shot beverage preparation system to produce her daily cup of coffee.
She charges the brewer at home in the morning with a pint-sized plastic coffee capsule and her hot drink is ready in minutes. At lunchtime, she takes a beer with a cappuccino scent to keep her in shape.
And just before going to bed, the resident of Hanceville, Alabama, opts for a "relaxing" hot chocolate taste.
"This thing is my life," Mooney said of his Walmart brand coffee maker. "But I know that throwing empty cups in the trash after using them is not the most eco-friendly thing to do."
She's right.
They are small, practical and filled with all imaginable flavors.
For some, they are expensive to buy. Others buy them wholesale by the dozen. Whatever the mode and place of purchase of 2-inch by 2-inch pods, these modern coffee containers are increasingly contributing to the plastic mountain that ends up in landfills.
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Before reaching this second or third cup, experts say that certain types of light could better cure your sleepiness. Tony Spitz from Buzz60 has the details.
Buzz60, Buzz60
To put it mildly, "coffee pods are one of the best examples of useless single-use plastics that pollute our planet," said John Hocevar, campaign manager for Greenpeace USA, a non-profit environmental organization. "Many end up being cremated, pouring poison into our air, into our water and into our soil."
Coffee pods can be found in rivers where they flow into lakes and oceans. Over time, plastic breaks down into smaller pieces that choke and kill wildlife, Hocevar said.
Whether it's K-Cups, Nespresso capsules or other brands, coffee pods are usually small plastic containers with aluminum lids that can create a cup of coffee by pressing on a button. Although they are significantly more expensive per pound than regular coffee in a saucepan, they are the perfect solution for caffeine addicts who need a quick fix since the '90s.
But the big boom took place around 2012, according to the National Coffee Association (NCA). In 2012, about 10% of coffee drinkers brewed using this method have been growing every year since.
In 2018, the number of users has more than doubled. Today, 41% of Americans own a single cup coffee maker, according to NCA and Statista, a market research firm.
Share of US consumers with a single-cup coffee system from 2005 to 2018 * (Photo: National Coffee Association / Statista)
Popular brands include supermarkets, pharmacies and some dollar store chains. Keurig Green Mountain, Starbucks, Folger Coffee Co. and Kraft Heinz Co.
Keurig, Inc. launched its K-Cups for the home in 2004, after a growing popularity in the office market. In ten years, enough K-Cups have been sold that, if they were placed end to end, would go around the world 10 times, said Hocevar.
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Coffee pods surrounded by other grocery products. (Photo: Commented / Jackson Ruckar)
A spokesman for Keurig said the company had sold 10.5 billion K-Cups for the fiscal year ending September 2015, the last year that public data was available. Chicago Tribune notes.
Keurig became private after a $ 13.9 billion buyout by JAB Holding Co. in 2016.
The same year, some cities around the world started to ban the K-Cup completely, because of the resistant nature of the product. In Hamburg, Germany, coffee pods were banned in buildings run by the state as part of an environmental movement.
Even the creator of the K-Cup has stopped using them for guilt, claiming that he "sometimes felt bad" with the waste of the product, according to the Atlantic.
The Swiss company Nestlé started to grow with its Nespresso coffee packaged in capsules in the 1990s. Although there were waste problems, the negative impact is reduced since the pods are aluminum instead of plastic.
"At the environmental level, at least aluminum is recyclable," Hocevar said. He noted that high exposure to aluminum could have negative effects on health.
Part of the problem of recycling tiny coffee pods comes from traceability.
Capsules are often too small to be picked up by some sorting systems in recycling plants. In addition, recycling centers can be submerged by mountains of waste, so filtering a pile of waste to find small capsules is not always effective.
"K-cups is removing the entire waste management system," Hocevar said. "They make more expensive things that would otherwise be easy to recycle, like aluminum cans."
In 2014, Keurig Green Mountains announced, by 2020, to change the plastic composition of the billions of individual K-cup coffee containers sold each year. The company started testing recyclable K-Cup pods in 2015 and is working with waste management facilities to ensure that recyclers can process the capsules.
The new K-Cup, made of polypropylene, can be sorted, shredded and sold to manufacturers using recycled plastic.
Currently, you can recycle K-Mugs, K-Carafes and Vue pods, as well as pods for two K-Cup varieties – Green Mountain Breakfast Blend and Green Mountain Breakfast Blend Decaf.
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Nespresso has an extensive sustainability program, which includes a list of commitments outlining how it plans to modify its operations to reduce its negative impact on the environment.
In particular, by 2020, Nespresso intends to recycle used capsules collected by the company in new capsules, when "it makes sense environmentally". In March 2019, the coffee capsule company announced its intention to spend more than $ 1 million to permit door-to-door recycling of its single-use packaging in New York.
"Nespresso is deeply committed to the circular use of its products, choosing aluminum packaging because they protect the quality of our outstanding coffees and can be recycled and reused again and again," said Guillaume Le Cunff, President and CEO. Chief Executive Officer of Nespresso USA.
Some consumers have developed methods for reusing pods to make oneself – from creating artwork to using them as small flower pots.
"My niece, 7 years old, and I are doing small projects with them, like tea parties with her dolls," said Mooney, a fan of coffee pods. "I use them to measure drugs for my dog and my cats." (The coffee pods) are the perfect size for a cup of medicine. "
Critics remain skeptical about the future of coffee pods.
KillTheKCup.org is a petition to draw attention to the growing waste products of the K-Cup.
"We are not asking the manufacturer to change. We are asking governments to kill the K-Cup, "says the website. "Other places already prohibit straws and plastic bags. Why not non-compostable K-cups?
A disaster movie "Kill the K-Cup" came out in 2015 and took the Internet by storm. The parodic film depicts monsters made of coffee pods that land flying saucers of coffee pods and terror in the rain in a city using Keurig pods.
Other environmentalists are more optimistic about the future of convenient coffee containers.
"Big producers like Nestle, Starbucks and Keurig are clearly aware and understand the problem very well," Hocevar said. "They are gradually reducing the problem by trying to make things less terrible.Reusable and refillable options are the way of the future."
Do you reuse your coffee pods? Tell the reporter about mainstream technology Dalvin Brown on Twitter: @Dalvin_Brown.
Read or share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/03/13/heres-why-your-used-k-cups-coffee-pods-arent-recycled-recycled/3067283002/
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