Your Keurig coffee pods will never be recycled

There is a Keurig machine in some 40 million families in the United States Single-serve coffee brewing systems — which allow consumers to brew just one cup of coffee at a time by inserting the pod into the slot and pressing a button — have risen in popularity since the early 2000s.

This inevitably leads to a lot of garbage.

Every cup of brewed coffee creates a puzzle: what to do with the coffee capsule that produced it. To start, can it be recycled? The answer, in Keurig’s case, is not really. The company’s single-use coffee pods – also known as K-cups – are made of polypropylene plastic, a material Experts warn that it is not recyclable Consumers have also been made to think. Two of the country’s largest recyclers said they don’t accept K-cup pods, and one environmental group calculated that if you lined up all the K-cup pods in the world’s landfills side by side, they It will comfortably circle the globe 10 times.

A new coffee pod company claims to have developed a solution to Keurig’s plastic waste problem. Cambio Roasters, which launched in September, offers a Keurig-compatible coffee pod made of 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 previously chief innovation officer at Keurig Green Mountain, as the company was formerly known. “This is, in our opinion, the most exciting innovation in coffee since the K-Cup,” Hartley said during a press conference on Cambio’s launch day.

However, experts aren’t sure Cambio understands how big of a problem K-cups pose to recycling systems.

“In reality, plastic is not a good choice,” said Jeremy Barry, a visiting professor of business and the environment at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. But even aluminum, with all its benefits, “will still have problems.”

Part of the difficulty in creating a truly recyclable packaging option—for almost any consumer good—is the highly fragmented nature of the American recycling landscape. “There are more than 10,000 recycling systems in the United States,” said Barry, who is also a member of the Plastic Pollution Working Group at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability at Duke University. “Yet, at the same time, only a quarter of the population has access to recycling in the United States” (Barry lives in one such community without a formal recycling program, outside Augusta, Maine). Whether something is recyclable can only be answered at the local level with precision.

Another problem is the plastic construction of most K-cup pods. Sustainability concerns have followed the Keurig brand closely as it has expanded. (Keurig was a small startup, acquired by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in 2006; in 2018, Keurig Green Mountain merged with Dr Pepper Snapple to become Keurig Dr Pepper.) Keurig began selling K-cups Made of polypropylene In 2016 with a goal Make 100 percent of K-cup pods “recyclable” By 2020. But the company ran into problems due to promoting recyclability. In 2018, a resident of California File a lawsuit against Keurig For their claim that K-cup pods can be recycled after removing the foil cap and rinsing off or disposing of the coffee residue – which led to Keurig Agreed to pay $10 million in class action settlement. And in September of this year, the Securities and Exchange Commission accused Keurig of falsely claiming “pods.”It can be effectively recycled(Keurig settled the claim by agreeing to pay a penalty fee of $1.5 million.)

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

Cambio isn’t the first single-serve coffee company to choose to ditch plastic or invest in circularity. Nespresso, a popular single-serve coffee company owned by the Nestlé Group, manufactures its capsules from aluminum For more than 30 years. In 2020, Nespresso announced that its capsules would be made from… 80% recycled aluminumand claims that the global recycling rate is 32 percent.

But Nespresso capsules only work in Nespresso machines. Because Cambio coffee pods are designed to work with Keurig models, Hartley hopes to give consumers what they want “without having to buy a new brewer.”

Cambio also allows users to peel off the cover and vacuum the ground before recycling. Nespresso pod The covers are difficult to removeThe company is asking users to recycle their pods as is, including ground and everything — but they’re only approved for curbside recycling. New York City and jersey citywhere the appointed recycling contractor cleans them before reprocessing them. (Nespresso consumers can also mail used capsules to the manufacturer for recycling, or drop them off at Nespresso stores.)

Unfortunately, experts say replacing plastic with aluminum doesn’t automatically solve the K-cup pod recycling crisis. What prevents coffee pods, regardless of what they are made of, from having a second life is their size.

After collection, recyclable materials are sorted at a facility known as a materials recovery facility, or MRF. MRF units are not equipped to collect small items – a common rule of thumb is that they can’t handle anything Smaller than a credit card – So small items placed in recycling bins often end up being sent to landfills. “The cups are so small they fall through” machines at many recycling facilities, Barry said. “Other than separating the coffee pods from the waste stream individually, there is no good way to recycle them.”

Cambio’s approach to this problem is twofold. First, the company says it wants consumers to stack used K-cup pods together — then seal them — to get around the volume requirements of many recycling facilities. Three or more used K-cup pods should make 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 is also developing a device that will make stacking and compressing used K-cups easier. “Think of this device as an easy way for consumers to group cups together and then throw them in their recycling bin,” Hartley said. He added that the company has applied for patents for the second generation of Cambio capsules that can be “snapped” together after use.

“I don’t think aluminum capsules are a meaningful improvement,” said Jan Dill, a chemical engineer and founder of an environmental nonprofit, citing their small size as an obstacle to their acceptance and sorting through curbside recycling systems. “Think of centuries like scraps of paper: impossible to put together again.”

Cambio disagreed with Dell’s characterization of the switch to aluminum, noting that currently, single-use plastic capsules are not recycled, while aluminum can be recycled infinitely. “For Cambio and consumers, these two facts make sense.” Hartley also shared that work to ensure Cambio is compatible with recycling programs across the country is “ongoing.” The company plans to conduct tests with MRFs 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 is “weighing our capsules to reduce the amount of plastic used,” as well as “increasing options to recycle them,” including a soon-to-launch program where customers will be able to mail their products. Used pods for Keurig recycling. The spokesperson also said the company is “continuously exploring” more “sustainable packaging” options.

Dell leads the nonprofit The Last Beach Cleanup, which focuses on combating plastic pollution. The ultimate solution to Keurig’s plastic footprint is a product that eliminates “the need to collect anything back from customers,” such as a fiber-based pouch that can be composted with the earth, she said.

Keurig is currently testing a vegetarian capsule format that will not contain any plastic or aluminum, and the company expects it to be certified biodegradable, according to Keurig spokesperson Dr Pepper. Hartley said he had worked on this product for many years, and described it as an “amazing innovation.”

But these coffee tablets, which are not yet on sale, It will require a completely new device To operate. “It’s going to take a long time before America gets rid of 40 or 50 million breweries and buys 40 or 50 million new ones,” Hartley said. “I won’t publicly tell how much money we spent to start from scratch and get 50 million American families to love their Keurig,” he added, referring to his time with Keurig. “But it’s a big accomplishment, and it takes decades.”

In an interview with The Atlantic magazine in 2015. Inventor of the K cup “I feel bad sometimes that I did it,” he said. As the market for Single-serve coffee makers As they grow, their environmental impact will grow as well, unless their products are somehow reimagined and redesigned. Keurigs and Nespresso machines are marketed as convenient and luxurious, a combination that will likely continue to attract new segments of the market.

But environmentally conscious baristas can rest assured that you don’t need a Keurig or Nespresso machine to brew one cup of coffee at a time; Any coffee maker can be disposable if you only use the water and coffee you actually need. No pods needed – maybe just a filter.

This article originally appeared on grinding in https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/why-its-so-hard-to-create-a-truly-recyclable-keurig-coffee-pod/. Grist is an independent, non-profit media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at grist.org.