Your Keurig coffee pots are never recycled

Some have a Keurig machine 40 million households in the United States Single-serve coffee brewing systems — which allow consumers to make just one cup of coffee at a time by placing a pot into a slot and pressing a button — have grown in popularity since the early 2000s.

This inevitably leads to a lot of garbage.

Each brewed cup of java creates a puzzle: what to do with the coffee pot that produced it. Is it recyclable to begin with? The answer, in Keurig’s case, is not really. The company’s disposable coffee cups – also known as K-cups – are made from polypropylene plastic. Experts warn that it is irreversible as consumers are led to think. The nation’s two largest recycling companies have said they don’t accept K-cup containers, and one environmental group calculated that if you lined up all the K-cup pods in the world’s landfills side by side, they he would easily circle the earth 10 times.

Keurig, a new coffee pot company, claims it has a solution to the plastic waste problem. Launching in September, Cambio Roasters offers a Keurig-compatible coffee pot made from aluminum—which, unlike plastic, is infinitely recyclable. Cambio is led by former Keurig employees, including founder and CEO Kevin Hartley, who previously served as chief innovation officer at Keurig Green Mountain. “In our opinion, this is the most exciting innovation in coffee since the K-cup,” Hartley said during the opening day press call for Cambio.

Experts aren’t sure Cambio understands just how big of a problem K-cups pose to curbside recycling systems.

“Plastic really isn’t a good choice,” said Jeremy Pare, a visiting professor of business and the environment at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. But even aluminum, with all its advantages, “will still have problems.”

Part of the challenge of creating a truly recyclable packaging option—for almost any consumer product—is the severely fragmented nature of the American recycling landscape. “There are over 10,000 recycling systems in the U.S.,” said Pare, who is also a member of the Plastic Pollution Task Force at Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability. “And yet, at the same time, only a quarter of the population in the U.S. has access to recycling.” (Pare lives in a community just outside of Augusta, Maine, with no formal recycling program.) whether or not can be accurately answered only at the local level.

Another problem is the plastic content of most K-cup pods. Sustainability concerns have closely followed the Keurig brand as it expands. (Keurig, a small startup, was acquired by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in 2006; in 2018, Keurig Green Mountain Dr Pepper merged with Snapple to become Keurig Dr Pepper.) Keurig began selling K-cups pods. made of polypropylene in 2016 with the goal Making 100 percent of K-cup containers “recyclable.” By 2020. But the company struggled to claim that it was recyclable. California resident in 2018 Sued Keurig for claiming that K-cup containers can be recycled after the foil lid is removed and the coffee grounds are rinsed or thrown away — resulting in Keurig. agreed to pay $10 million in classifieds. And in September of this year, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Keurig with false claims of pods.can be effectively recycled.” (Keurig settled the suit by agreeing to pay a $1.5 million fine.)

Hartley, who left Keurig in 2017, knew consumers wanted a plastic-free K-cup option — and after years of prototyping and testing, he and his team settled on aluminum as an easier-to-recycle alternative. Aluminum is also impermeable to oxygen, which causes the coffee to lose its flavor over time. “When we brew a cup of coffee, it tastes exactly as the roaster intended,” Hartley said.

Cambio isn’t the first single-serve coffee company to ditch plastic or invest in recycling. Nespresso, a famous single-serve coffee company belonging to the Nestlé Group, has made its capsules out of aluminum. For more than 30 years. In 2020, Nespresso announced the development of pods 80 percent recycled aluminumand claims that the global recycling rate 32 percent.

However, Nespresso pods only work in Nespresso machines. Because the Cambio coffee pods are designed to work with Keurig models, Hartley hopes to give consumers what they want “without buying a new brew.”

Cambio also allows users to peel off the lid and empty the floor before recycling. Nespresso pot the lids are difficult to removeand the company instructs users to recycle their pods as is, ground and all, but they’re only allowed for curbside recycling. New York City and Jersey Citywhere a designated recycling contractor cleans them before recycling them. (Nespresso consumers can also send used pods to the manufacturer for recycling or store them at Nespresso stores.)

Unfortunately, replacing plastic with aluminum doesn’t automatically solve the K-cup pod recycling crisis, experts say. Regardless of what they’re made of, the real barrier to repurposing coffee pots is their size.

After collection, recyclables are sorted at a facility known as a materials recovery facility, or MRF. MRFs are not equipped to collect small items – the general rule is that they cannot handle anything. smaller than a credit card – and so small items put in recycling bins are often sent to landfills. “K-cups are so small that they end up in machines at many recycling facilities,” Pare said. “So there’s no good way to recycle coffee cups individually” other than separating them from the waste stream.

To work around this, Cambio’s approach is twofold. First, the company says it wants consumers to stack used K-cup pods together and then compress and seal them to avoid the size requirements of many recycling facilities. Three or more used K-cup pods should create a piece of aluminum large enough to fit into machines at recycling facilities, Hartley says. (These instructions do not currently appear on Cambio’s packaging or website.)

Cambio says it’s also developing a device that will make it easier to collect and compress used K-cups. “Think of this device as an easy way for consumers to stack cups together and then throw them in the trash,” Hartley said. He added that the company has applied for patents for second-generation Cambio pods that can be “torn” together after use.

“I don’t think aluminum cans are a significant improvement,” said Jan Dell, a chemical engineer and founder of an environmental nonprofit, citing their small size as a barrier to acceptance and sorting through curbside recycling systems. “Think of containers like confetti: they can’t be put back together.”

Cambio disagreed with Dell’s characterization of the switch to aluminum, noting that currently single-use plastic containers are not recyclable, while aluminum is infinitely recyclable. “These two facts make sense for Cambio and consumers.” Hartley also shared that work is “ongoing” to ensure Cambio’s compliance with recycling programs across the country. The company plans to conduct trials with MRFs in specific markets “as soon as possible.”

“We know our consumers want simplicity and less waste,” a Keurig Dr Pepper spokesperson said in response to a request for comment. They shared that the company is “lightening our containers to reduce the amount of plastic used,” as well as “increasing their recycling options,” including a soon-to-be-launched program where customers can mail in their products. used pods for Keurig for recycling. The spokesperson also said the company is “constantly exploring” more “sustainable packaging” options.

Dell heads The Last Beach Cleanup, a non-profit organization dedicated to combating plastic pollution. The ultimate solution to Keurig’s plastic footprint, he said, is a product that eliminates “the need for customers to collect anything back,” such as a fiber-based pod that can be composted along with the grounds.

Keurig is currently testing a plant-based pod format with no plastic or aluminum, and the company expects it to be certified compostable, according to a Keurig Dr Pepper spokesperson. Hartley said he had been working on the product for many years and called it “an amazing innovation.”

However, these coffee beans are not yet available for sale will require a completely new machine run away “It’s going to take a long time for America to dump 40 or 50 million brewers and get 40 or 50 million new brewers,” Hartley said. Referring to his time with Keurig, he added, “I’m not going to tell you how much we spent to start from scratch and get 50 million American families to love Keurigs. But it’s a big lift and it takes decades.”

In a 2015 interview with The Atlantic, Inventor of the K cup “Sometimes I feel bad for doing it,” she said. Like the market single serve coffee makers Unless its products are wildly reimagined and redesigned in some way, its environmental impact will also grow. Keurigs and Nespresso machines are marketed as both convenient and luxurious, a combination that is likely to continue to gain traction in new market segments.

But eco-friendly coffee brewers can rest easy knowing that you don’t need a Keurig or Nespresso machine to brew a cup of coffee every time; Any coffee maker can serve you alone if you use only the water and coffee grounds you need. No group required – maybe just a filter.

This article originally appeared here Grist hour https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/why-its-so-hard-to-create-a-truly-recyclable-keurig-coffee-pod/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories about climate solutions and a just future. Learn more Grist.org.