Your Keurig Espresso Pods Are By no means Getting Recycled

There’s a Keurig machine in some 40 million households in the U.S. Single-serve espresso brewing programs — which permit customers to make only one cup of espresso at a time by feeding a pod right into a slot and urgent a button — have soared in reputation for the reason that early 2000s.

Inevitably, this results in plenty of trash.

Each cup of java brewed creates a conundrum: what to do with the espresso pod that produced it. To begin, can it’s recycled? The reply, in Keurig’s case, will not be actually. The corporate’s single-use espresso pods — also called Ok-cups — are fabricated from polypropylene plastic, a cloth that experts warn is not as recyclable as customers have been led to suppose. Two of the nation’s largest recycling firms have stated they don’t settle for Ok-cup pods, and one environmental group calculated that when you lined up all of the Ok-cup pods on the earth’s landfills facet by facet, they would comfortably circle the globe 10 times.

A brand new espresso pod firm claims to have developed an answer to Keurig’s plastic waste downside. Cambio Roasters, which launched in September, affords a Keurig-compatible espresso pod that’s made out of aluminum — which, not like plastic, is infinitely recyclable. Cambio is led by a crew of former Keurig workers, together with founder and CEO Kevin Hartley, who was beforehand a chief innovation officer at Keurig Inexperienced Mountain, as the corporate was previously identified. “That is, in our view, essentially the most thrilling innovation in espresso for the reason that Ok-cup,” stated Hartley throughout a launch-day press name for Cambio.

Specialists, nonetheless, aren’t positive that Cambio understands simply how massive of an issue Ok-cups pose to curbside recycling programs.

“Actually, plastic is simply not an excellent choice,” stated Jeremy Pare, a visiting professor of enterprise and setting at Duke College’s Nicholas Faculty of the Surroundings. However even aluminum, with all its advantages, is “nonetheless going to have points.”

A part of the problem of making a really recyclable packaging choice — for almost any shopper good — is the severely fragmented nature of the American recycling panorama. “There are over 10,000 recycling programs within the U.S.,” stated Pare, who can also be a member of the Plastic Air pollution Working Group at Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Power, Surroundings, and Sustainability. “And but, on the similar time, solely 1 / 4 of the inhabitants has entry to recycling within the U.S.” (Pare lives in a single such neighborhood with no formal recycling program, simply exterior of Augusta, Maine.) Within the U.S., the query of whether or not one thing is recyclable can solely precisely be answered on a neighborhood degree.

One other downside is the plastic composition of most Ok-cup pods. Sustainability considerations have adopted the Keurig model intently because it has scaled. (As soon as a small startup, Keurig was acquired by Inexperienced Mountain Espresso Roasters in 2006; in 2018, Keurig Inexperienced Mountain merged with Dr Pepper Snapple to develop into Keurig Dr Pepper.) Keurig began promoting Ok-cups pods made of polypropylene in 2016, with the aim of making 100 percent of K-cup pods “recyclable” by 2020. However the firm has run into hassle for touting recyclability. In 2018, a California resident sued Keurig for claiming that Ok-cup pods might be recycled after the foil lid was eliminated and the espresso grounds have been rinsed or dumped out — which resulted in Keurig agreeing to pay $10 million in a class-action settlement. And in September of this 12 months, the Securities and Alternate Fee charged Keurig for falsely claiming the pods “can be effectively recycled.” (Keurig settled the declare by agreeing to pay a $1.5 million penalty charge.)

Hartley, who left Keurig in 2017, knew customers wished a plastic-free Ok-cup choice — and after years of prototypes and testing, he and his crew settled on aluminum as an easier-to-recycle different. Aluminum can also be impervious to oxygen, which causes espresso to lose its taste over time. “Every time we brew a cup of espresso, it tastes precisely because the roastmaster supposed,” stated Hartley.

Cambio isn’t the primary single-serve espresso firm to choose to ditch plastic or spend money on circularity. Nespresso, a well-liked single-serve espresso firm that’s owned by the Nestlé Group, has made its capsules out of aluminum for over 30 years. In 2020, Nespresso introduced that its pods could be fabricated from 80 percent recycled aluminum, and it claims its world recycling price is 32 percent.

However Nespresso pods solely work in Nespresso machines. As a result of Cambio espresso pods are designed to work with Keurig fashions, Hartley hopes to offer customers what they need “with out having to purchase a brand new brewer.”

Cambio additionally permits customers to peel again the lid and dump out the grounds earlier than recycling. Nespresso pod lids are difficult to remove, and the corporate instructs customers to recycle their pods as is, grounds and all — however they’re solely accepted for curbside recycling in New York City and Jersey City, the place a delegated recycling contractor cleans them out earlier than reprocessing them. (Nespresso customers can even mail used pods again to the producer for recycling, or drop them off at Nespresso shops.)

Sadly, swapping plastic for aluminum doesn’t mechanically resolve Ok-cup pods’ recyclability disaster, consultants say. What actually prevents espresso pods, no matter what they’re fabricated from, from having a second life is their dimension.

After assortment, recyclables are sorted at a facility often known as a supplies restoration facility, or MRF. MRFs aren’t geared up to gather small gadgets — a standard rule of thumb is that they’ll’t deal with something smaller than a credit card — and so small objects positioned in recycling bins usually wind up getting despatched to landfills. “The Ok-cups are so small that they fall by means of” the equipment in lots of recycling amenities, stated Pare. “So aside from separating” espresso pods from the waste stream “individually, there’s no good method to recycle them.”

Cambio’s strategy to working round that is two-pronged. First, the corporate says it desires customers to stack used Ok-cup pods collectively — after which pinch them closed — to beat many recycling amenities’ dimension necessities. Three or extra used Ok-cup pods ought to create a bit of aluminum massive sufficient to suit by means of the equipment at recycling amenities, says Hartley. (These directions don’t presently seem on Cambio’s packaging or web site.)

Cambio says additionally it is growing a tool that can make this stacking and pinching of used Ok-cups simpler. “Consider this gadget as a simple manner for customers to bundle cups collectively after which toss into their recycling bin,” stated Hartley. He added that the corporate has filed for patents for second-generation Cambio pods that may be “snapped” collectively after use.

Jan Dell, a chemical engineer and an environmental nonprofit founder, stated, “I don’t suppose aluminum pods are a significant enchancment,” citing their small dimension as a barrier to being accepted and sorted through curbside recycling programs. “Consider the pods like confetti: not possible to gather again up.”

Cambio disagreed with Dell’s characterization of the change to aluminum, stating that presently, primarily no single-use plastic pods are recycled, whereas aluminum will be endlessly recycled. “To Cambio and customers, these two details are significant.” Hartley additionally shared that the work of guaranteeing Cambio’s compatibility with recycling applications throughout the nation is “ongoing.” The corporate is planning to run assessments with MRFs in particular markets “as quickly as possible.”

In response to a request for remark, a spokesperson from Keurig Dr Pepper stated, “We all know our customers need simplicity and fewer waste.” They shared that the corporate has “been lightweighting our pods to cut back the quantity of plastic used,” in addition to “rising choices for recycling them,” together with a soon-to-be-launched program by which prospects will have the ability to mail their used pods to Keurig for recycling. The spokesperson additionally stated the corporate is “regularly exploring” extra “sustainable packaging” choices.

Dell leads the nonprofit The Final Seaside Cleanup, which is concentrated on combating plastic air pollution. The last word answer to Keurig’s plastic footprint, she stated, is a product that eliminates “the necessity to accumulate something again from prospects,” like a fiber-based pod that may be composted together with the grounds.

Keurig is presently testing a plant-based pod format that received’t have any plastic or aluminum, and the corporate expects it to be licensed compostable, based on the Keurig Dr Pepper spokesperson. Hartley stated he labored on that product for a few years, calling it “an incredible innovation.”

However these espresso pucks, which aren’t but out there on the market, will require an entirely new machine to run. “It’s going to take a very long time earlier than America goes to throw away 40 or 50 million brewers and purchase 40 or 50 million new brewers,” stated Hartley. He added, referring to his time with Keurig, “I received’t inform publicly how a lot cash we spent to begin from zero and have 50 million American households loving their Keurigs. Nevertheless it’s an enormous raise, and it takes many years.”

In an interview with the Atlantic in 2015, the inventor of the K-cup stated, “I really feel unhealthy typically that I ever did it.” As the marketplace for single-serve coffee brewers grows, so will its impression on the setting, until its merchandise are one way or the other wildly reimagined and redesigned. Keurigs and Nespresso machines are marketed as each handy and opulent, a mix that’s prone to preserve drawing in new market segments.

However eco-conscious espresso brewers can relaxation straightforward within the information that you simply don’t want a Keurig or Nespresso machine to brew one cup of espresso at a time; any espresso maker will be single-serve when you use solely the water and occasional grounds you really want. No pods required — perhaps only a filter.

This text initially appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/why-its-so-hard-to-create-a-truly-recyclable-keurig-coffee-pod/. Grist is a nonprofit, unbiased media group devoted to telling tales of local weather options and a simply future. Study extra at Grist.org.