WHO KNEW Your Keurig Coffee Machine Doesn’t Automatically Have a Plastics Problem?

I don’t know about you, but for years I used plastic Keurig K-Cups to brew two or three cups of coffee every single day. That’s a lot of plastic. It has been estimated that K-Cups lead to something like 576,000 tons of waste yearly - roughly the weight of 4,400 school buses.

At some point Keurig-Dr Pepper converted the pods to what is claimed to be a more “recyclable” kind of plastic: #5. And for a few years local businesses accepted empty pods for recycling.. But not all curbside trash collection businesses accept #5 plastic, which means that, even if you take the time to remove the aluminum foil cover, scrape the coffee grounds into your compost pile, and remove the paper lining inside the pod, you’re still stuck with a waste product that’ll probably end up in the landfill anyway. And it isn’t just in landfills where the pods can leach harmful substances. The simple act of brewing coffee through the aluminum foil lid and the plastic container itself can expose consumers to microscopic bits of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (“EDCs”).

Recently, Keurig-Dr Pepper paid the Securities and Exchange Commission a fine of $1.5 million for misleading people about how safe and recyclabletheir K-Cups are - or aren’t.

What to do? Look for coffee pods made of stainless steel instead. They usually come in packs of two for a price of around $12 - $15. Some manufacturers make reusable pods out of plastic, but that doesn’t solve the problems of leaching harmful substances into your coffee and the need to eventually recycle the plastic (all plastic degrades over time). And, plastics are petroleum products; their very creation contributes to climatechange. (https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/19/1081856/plastic-climate/?gad_source=5&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-pfD1qzIiQMVa1lHAR3ylzIVEAAYAyAAEgKrL_D_BwE)

Steel coffee pods are available at some of the stores on Route 12-A in West Lebanon, and there are other options online. Another solution? Use a coffee maker that doesn’t require pods.