Much has been made about the waste and plastic pollution factor with one-serving coffee capsules. I don’t even think I have found a K-Cup on the beach, although plastic creamers are fairly common. I have over the years found knives laying around on the beach.
With over 75 Million people just in the USA using single serving coffee .. that is a lot of unnecessary plastic waste. So how do you reuse or recycle them?
Well one way is to team up with a company to make some products. Nespresso has teamed with the Swiss Army knife guys to create a Nespresso knife. The knife includes a blade, can opener, 2 screwdrivers, bottle opener, wire stripper. It takes 24 aluminum Nespresso capsules to make this limited edition knife.
Unfortunately this is only a limited edition… which means how many more Nepresso cups are in our landfills.
I Just Got to Eco You
- Nepresso is part of the Nestle Family. Nestle is best known for human rights abuses, abusing water rights, pollution, unethical marketing practices in the breastfeeding market. and more.
- One aluminum coffee pod takes to completely breakdown in a landfill is 150-500 years.
- Keurig is the next largest competitor and their pods are difficult to recycle.
- Hamburg, Germany: The first city in the world to banned the use of coffee pods in government-run buildings, offices, schools and universities.
- Germans use roughly 3 billion pods a year.
- 1.5 million households in Australia own a pod machine.
- 75 million homes in the USA brewing single use pods like K-cups (Keurig) everyday.
- Only 33% of recycling centers will take a coffee pod for recycling.
Keurig did launch their new ‘recyclable’ coffee pods.. Seriously, the average person does not even recycle right and are they really going to do this?
The pod comes out of the machine hot. Let it cool. Then, struggle to peel the foil off its top (unlike yogurt tubs, there is no tab on the foil). Toss the foil in the garbage. Scoop the coffee grounds into the compost. Under the grounds a little paper filter is glued to the plastic. Tear that filter off and discard. Rinse excess grounds off the cup. Now, throw the little plastic cups in the recycling (typically blue) bin. (Financial Press)
Then because it is so difficult to recycle.. what city is going to recycle them?
Resources:
Nestlé admits slavery in Thailand while fighting child labour lawsuit in Ivory Coast