Keurig Spends 10 Years Developing A Recyclable Coffee Cup (boston.com)

Last year Keurig Green Mountain sold over 9 billion single servings of its coffee in plastic "K-Cups" -- none of which could be recycled. "Placed end to end, the pods sold in a year would circle the globe roughly 10 times," reports the New York Times News Service, noting the company spent the last 10 years developing a backwards-compatible cup that could actually be recycled. In the mid-1990s, "Keurig began buying the containers -- made from a blend of plastic that is tough to recycle -- in bulk, never expecting that it would one day sell billions a year. But because Keurig machines were designed specifically for the pods, changing course soon seemed virtually impossible." One environmental advocate complained "There are a lot of ways to make coffee that don't use so much packaging. Making coffee wasn't something that needed to be reinvented." But the company may still face criticism because their new cups can be recycled -- but not composted.

Comments

Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, because every time I get coffee from one of those little cups it taste like it's already been composted.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, it looks like somebody tried to hit Insightful but missed and hit Funny.

Re:Hmm

[EvilSS]

Funny, because every time I get coffee from one of those little cups it taste like it's already been composted.

Then I have to ask, why the hell are you drinking coffee from them? Your comment implies that you've done it more than once. Unless you enjoy the taste. I know taste is subjected but still....

Re: Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, because every time I get coffee from one of those little cups it taste like it's already been composted.
Then I have to ask, why the hell are you drinking coffee from them? Your comment implies that you've done it more than once. Unless you enjoy the taste. I know taste is subjected but still....

Presumably because every hotel, outhouse and barnhouse have replaced their previously drinkable machines with this garbage?

Do you suffer from some kind of mental problem that makes the bleeding obvious invisible?

Re:Hmm

[konohitowa]

News for Aspergians.

Re:Hmm

[Mashiki]

There are millions of people who buy coffee from Tim Horton's here in Canada every day. But you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who actually agrees that their coffee tastes anything like watered down shit.

Re:Hmm

[fred911]

Addiction satiation blinds taste, every time.

Re:Hmm

[Frosty Piss]

But you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who actually agrees that their coffee tastes anything like watered down shit.

I'm sure Tim Horton's is very happy about that.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Keurig is swill for people who don't know their coffee. It's the US Budweiser (real Czech Budweiser is good) of coffee.

Re:Hmm

[Mashiki]

I'm sure Tim Horton's is very happy about that.

They probably are, but if you ask others it's right around the quality of raw sewage.

Re:Hmm

[rwven]

No, keurig coffee is legitimately terrible. It's just convenient.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, millions of flies can't be wrong?

Re:Hmm

[vovin]

Canadians are very patriotic about their Tim Hortons.

Apparently it's like a comfort food. Stale burned coffee with lots of sugar and milk
Asking for black coffee (at TH) and they get mind bogglingly confused. After tasting it I understood why ... Much better to get a known sub-standard coffee from McD's than that wacko shit from TH.

Re: Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

And offices. When I returned to the US after 6 years abroad, in my new office, I ran into a Keurig machine, and had no idea about how to operate it. Mr Coffee had virtually disappeared. After I was shown, it was okay. But point is that if you're in an office, you can either have whatever supplies they have, or you can go down to the nearest Starbucks or Peets or wherever you prefer - assuming that it's walking distance. Given the workload, who has time to do that?

Also, I've found that those K-cups can be used for 2 small cups, as opposed to being discarded after one. Although the coffee in the second can sometimes be more diluted.

Re:Hmm

[TheRaven64]

They're in most hotels. They produce a brown liquid that is a vague approximation of coffee. After an 8-hour flight with a couple of hours of travel at each end, if it's a choice between that or leaving the hotel to find good coffee, the machine wins. I've never understood them for home or office use though - they're more expensive than most ways of producing better coffee.

Re: Hmm

[Type44Q]

Apparently there are millions of people who disagree with you.

There are millions who'd disagree with my refusal to ever consume McDonalds... do I really need to continue?!

Re:Hmm

[GNious]

So it's better than ca all other "beverages" called coffee?

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

The US has Starbucks. Coffee brewed from charcoal.

Re:Hmm

[thegarbz]

Taste is just a part of the equation. People are often happy to eat shit and drink frosty piss if they can get it at a push of a button, or at the drive-through window.

I have one of these machines at home. Gets me through the morning, but I wouldn't dream of using it if I have more than a few minutes to actually make a coffee or I want to sit down and enjoy one. Did you count me in your millions?

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

The flavor depends on WHICH k-cup you're using. Most brands of K-Cup do taste bad but that's more to do with having crap coffee in them in the first place. Barista Prima Italian Roast is a fantastic K-Cup though (assuming you like dark roasts).

Theoretically, the K-Cup should make better coffee (to pre-ground drip coffee) because of being protected from air deterioration. When you start with lousy coffee to begin with though it doesn't help.

Re: Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently there are millions of people who disagree with you.

There are millions who'd disagree with my refusal to ever consume McDonalds... do I really need to continue?!

Oh, I agree fully and haven't darkened the door of a McDonalds in well over ten years now. Further, I don't plan on changing my distaste for their garbage.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

But those "others" are the people you'd be hard pressed to find. Read your comment again, I don't think you said what you wanted to say!

Re: Hmm

[avatar avatar]

That's...actually the best description I've heard of its flavor. No longer shall I describe is as "a mix of laxatives and coffee-laced stomach acid".

Re:Hmm

[FictionPimp]

In my experience it's the ratio of grounds to water. Most people hit the 'big cup' button and get a bad cup simply because the ratio is wrong.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. I drink Keurig not because it tastes good, but because that is what is available in the office, and coffee is simply a caffeine delivery mechanism to me.

Re:Hmm

[dfm3]

I'd venture to say that most of those millions load their coffee with so much sugar and milk/cream that it barely resembles coffee anyway, and is more like sweetened milk with a bit of a coffee flavor. Anecdotally, a good number of the coffee drinkers I know are just in it for the caffeine, and by their own admission they don't actually like the taste, so I'll watch them add as much as six tablespoons! of sugar to a crappy cup of coffee to make it palatable. That's so much sugar that most of it doesn't even dissolve but goes to waste in the bottom of the cup.

My point is that many coffee drinkers don't care about quality; they just want their caffeine fix and they want it now. That's why, for better or worse, things like instant coffee or Keurig cups are so popular.

Re: Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a bitter milkshake, go to starbucks. If you want a cup of real coffee go to mcdonalds. Simple.

Re: Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone should come up with a list of errors of logic and name them, then others could use that list to help people understand when they make those errors.

Re:Hmm

[FatdogHaiku]

You're right, it looks like somebody tried to hit Insightful but missed and hit Funny.

Five times...

Re: Hmm

[Pascoea]

my refusal to ever consume McDonalds

Is that why your shit doesn't stink?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. People don't eat McDonalds because they are after a "gourmet burger", they eat it because it's convenient. And of the convenient options they find it tastes the best, or it is slightly more convenient than Y brand fast food, or whatever reason they have for eating there.

I don't have a Keurig at home (that I use every day) because I'm after the best tasting coffee possible. I use it because I'm the only one that drinks coffee in my household at 7AM, and brewing a full pot is more wasteful of my time, coffee, water, and energy than using my Keurig. As a bonus, it's convenient as hell and brews an acceptable cup of coffee. (It helps that I'm not a pretentious snob that thinks I'm better than everyone else because I use a french press instead of a Keurig. Or don't eat at McDonalds).

Half the time I use K cups, half the time I use a re-usable pod. If I had the choice of selecting my k cup based on its ability to be easily recycled I would probably buy the recyclable one.

Re:Hmm

[FatdogHaiku]

What the hell are you people drinking up there that you can make that comparison?
I mean, I guess you would be wide awake after drinking it, but damn...

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of them are decent and some are horrible. The best is to get a reusable keurig container and put in your own grinded coffee in it. It takes about 10-15 seconds to clean out filter after you make a cup but we don't mind and the cup of coffee tastes great. Good for light coffee drinkers (1 or 2 cups a day).

Re:Hmm

[DarkOx]

Millions of people drink instance coffee. Millions buy it pre-ground in large containers that take weeks or months to consume the contents of. That does not mean either of these practices is a good way to make a great cup of coffee it means people like things easy.

The K-cup is the ultimate level of lazy that still results in coffee slightly better than instant. For the most part the top draw K-cup stuff is inferior in terms of results to mid grade beans you grind at home. Anyone serious about coffee will agree with that. It easy easy though.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I always get a medium black coffee. They have never looked confused about this at any Timmies I have ever went to (a lot of them).

Re: Hmm

[konohitowa]

It helps that I'm not a pretentious snob that thinks I'm better than everyone else because I use a french press instead of a Keurig. Or don't eat at McDonalds.

So what type of pretentious snob are you?

Re:Hmm

[MightyYar]

Yup.

Though to be fair, if you put a ton of milk/cream in it it tastes OK. They must not be geared towards black coffee.

At Starbucks, if you order an Americano (watered down espresso) it tastes like something approaching a regular cup of coffee.

As for K-Cups, you can find adequacy in the ones marked "extra bold", which is apparently code for "we actually put some grounds in the cup". And then stay away from the darker roasts or you get the Starbucks charcoal love.

Re: Hmm

[MightyYar]

It's not pretentious to point out that McDonald's or Keurig are terrible. McDonald's is pretty much the cheapest prepared food one can buy, the lowest of the low. You can eat there or not eat there, but there's nothing pretentious about avoiding it. The K-Cup is, by definition, stale coffee brewed in too-small an amount. The science just doesn't work out. There is nothing pretentious about pointing this out. McDonalds wins because of fast service, uniform quality, and low prices. The K-Cup wins because you can have a single portion of coffee in seconds. If you throw enough cream and sugar in it, you probably won't even notice - and a lot of people do just that. It's not pretentious to fry an egg on a stove instead of microwaving it, or baking a pie from scratch instead of eating a Hostess - nor is it pretentious to spend a little extra time grinding your beans in a $20 grinder and using a $20 automatic drip or even cheaper French press to brew your morning Joe. If you like your coffee black, it's probably worth it.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, because every time I get coffee from one of those little cups it taste like it's already been composted.

So you're saying that it tastes almost but not quite entirely unlike coffee?

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Millions of people eat at The Olive Garden. Millions of people still buy, and consume Cheeze Whiz. Obviously there's millions of people with very bad taste. Are you seriously trying to say that "because people buy it, it must be good"?

Re: Hmm

[tinkerton]

I doubt if McDonald's should be described as 'cheap'. I'd describe it as 'fast' and with a taste tuned to instant mass appeal. In Europe McDonald's is not cheap. I also doubt if its food is inferior. It'll be too fat and too sweet as long as that sells.

Re:Hmm

[Esteanil]

I always figured their deep commitment to recycling meant they also recycled their coffee grounds

Re: Hmm

[Pascoea]

Scotch is my vice. Doesn't mean I'm going to call a guy out for drinking Jack Daniels.

Re:Hmm

[StikyPad]

McDonalds have served "billions and billions." Does McDonald's taste great? Maybe if you've never had a proper burger.

Pour some fresh-ground coffee into a french press. It's a fraction of the cost, and it will be substantially closer to the best cup of coffee you've ever had than any K-cup.

Keurigs certainly have value, especially if convenience is your primary concern, but many people aren't aware of the trade-off they're making, or how much better their coffee could taste. It's comparable to the difference between canned fruit and fresh fruit.

Re: Hmm

[StikyPad]

I don't think anybody got "called out," except Keurig. The discussion was squarely focused on the product, not the person.

Re:Hmm

[StikyPad]

I think it's fair to say that all consumed coffee is instance coffee. Abstract coffee factories are very difficult to drink.

Re: Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh, fucking fast food prices these days. It's been a while since I've been to McDonald's for anything except breakfast, but I think their prices were up there sky high too. Freaking Sonic and Steak and Shake are cheaper these days than Burger King, McDonald's, and Wendy's! It didn't really hit home for me until I ordered a #2 and #3 with a friend a few weeks back. Fucking $17 or so combined!

I can get 2 lbs of ground chuck, bacon (and not burn it to a fucking crisp), buns, sliced cheese, and frozen fries for under $10! Even cheaper if I just cut and salt the potatoes myself. (Starting to teach myself how to cook from raw ingredients better; first thing to learn is how to properly cut with a knife. Slowly getting faster and more consistent all the time.) I don't go to Whole Foods very often, but I think next time friends and I want burgers, I'll head over there and see if I can still get in under $10. This all assumes, of course, that one's fridge has ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and maybe random onion or pickles.

I'm sure if I had the free cash to buy a whole cow and have it butchered to where I could put it in a freezer in the garage, I could go even cheaper even after figuring in the cost of the freezer and power (even better if I could solar power the sucker). Ah well, everything's cheaper when you have more liquid assets. C'est la vie.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Yours must be broken. My Cuisinart machine makes coffee unrivaled by anything other than a French press and fresh ground beans, neither of which I have time for on a daily basis. It's better than when I ground my own beans and used a drip machine too.

Re:Hmm

[cellocgw]

They produce a brown liquid that is a vague approximation of coffee.

I believe the official slashdotically approved phrasing is "..a brown liquid that tasted almost, but not entirely, nothing like coffee."
(apologies to the obvious paraphrasee)

Re: Hmm

[I4ko]

In-N-Out is also pretty convenient, especially the protein style cheeseburger. Almost balanced for a keto diet.

Re: Hmm

[I4ko]

P.S. people with French presses aren't snobs. It is just way faster than to brew a proper pot of coffee by the Turkish/Greek/Arabian method.

Re:Hmm

[kuzb]

The two things I've discovered about Keurig:

1) Not all the k-cup brands are the same. Some are much better than others. I'm partial to the Barsita Prima brand, but YMMV.

2) The smaller cups (not the karafe ones) are all designed for the 10-12oz serving sizes and tend to get too weak if you go larger. If you're trying to fill a travel mug, you should use 2 k-cups instead of trying to use 1 k-cup twice like some people do.

Re:Hmm

[laffer1]

As someone who uses them frequently, let me explain. It's about laziness and choice. I can drop a pod in the machine and get a cup of coffee without grinding, getting a filter, etc. My wife can enjoy a different brand of coffee without making two pots.

Our habit costs about $60/month in the winter and around $20/month in the summer. We would have spent $20 to $40 on beans anyway.

A significant number of our k-cups are San Francisco Bay because they're a little more environmentally friendly.

Re:Hmm

[kuzb]

"Stale burned coffee"

It sells too fast to become stale or burnt. It's just not very strong, and in my opinion not very good. Of course, not everyone likes strong coffee like I do.

"Much better to get a known sub-standard coffee from McD's"

When was the last time you had a coffee from McDonalds? That's one of the few things they actually get right.

Apparently a low slashdot ID shouldn't be confused with being insightful or intelligent.

Re: Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I doing this right?

Re:Hmm

[AvitarX]

I'd drink starbucks instant over a K-cup, at least for cold coffee.

Re: Hmm

[kuzb]

"It's not pretentious to point out that McDonald's or Keurig are terrible."

It's entirely pretentious when we have to listen to the opinions of people who can't be bothered to actually try the stuff. Keurig is not a coffee - it's a brewing system and not all the coffees are the same. As for McDonalds - most people who talk about them negatively last went a decade ago and no longer have any idea what the coffee is like.

It's sort of like the idiots who say windows constantly crashes, then you find out the last Windows version they used was 98me.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a Java programmer. Parent comment isn't meta enough. This is how I get my coffee (tho I prefer iced tea tyvm).

@Autowired private static CoffeeFactoryFactory factory_factory;

public Coffee getCoffee() {
    CoffeeFactory factory = factory_factory.getCoffeeFactory(CoffeeFactoryFactory.FAIR_TRADE | CoffeeFactoryFactory.ORGANIC);
    CoffeeBeanPropertyBean mr_bean = factory.getBeanPropertyBean();
    mr_bean.setRoasting(CoffeeBeanPropertyBean.DARK_ROAST);
    GroundCoffeeBeanBeans ground_beans = factory.getGroundCoffeeBeanBean(mr_bean);
    CoffeePotBean pot = factory.getCoffeePotBean();
    return pot.getCoffeePot().getBrewedBeans(ground_beans);
}

Re:Hmm

[TheRaven64]

It's not that bad - it's far better than instant coffee, which would merit that description. It's coffee, it's just not good coffee, though it's better than the over-roast crap you get in places like Starbucks that consider bitterness to be the only flavour that coffee should have.

Re: Hmm

[MightyYar]

it's a brewing system and not all the coffees are the same.

It's a brewing system with fundamental problems, such as pre-ground coffee and limited volume, time, and pressure. The best you can do is get the "extra bold" capsules and keep your expectations kind of low. Or you can do the Starbucks thing and use a really dark roast, then add cream and sugar. You can buy refillable capsules and put your own coffee in them. But you cannot fix the physics of the system.

most people who talk about them negatively last went a decade ago and no longer have any idea what the coffee is like.

The McDonald's coffee improved several years ago to the point where I personally prefer it to Starbucks or any K-Cup I've ever tried. But I don't think we were talking about their coffee exclusively.

Re: Hmm

[MightyYar]

My kids do like McDonald's, but to be fair I think they really like the toys. When I tell them they can't have a Happy Meal, they generally choose Wendys or KFC. I can't think of cheaper prepared food than McDonald's, and I can't think of faster service. I find it very hard to believe that many people rank the taste of their food above other options, but to each their own.

Re: Hmm

[Type44Q]

But I don't think we were talking about their coffee exclusively.

You are correct; I was not.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

It is funny that we're so patriotic toward a Canadian brand owned by a Brazilian company.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

As patriotic as we are, some Vancouver BC company created a compostable K-Cup

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/06/22/gkup-coffee-pods_n_7640312.html

Re: Hmm

[EvilSS]

Funny, because every time I get coffee from one of those little cups it taste like it's already been composted. Then I have to ask, why the hell are you drinking coffee from them? Your comment implies that you've done it more than once. Unless you enjoy the taste. I know taste is subjected but still....

Presumably because every hotel, outhouse and barnhouse have replaced their previously drinkable machines with this garbage?

Do you suffer from some kind of mental problem that makes the bleeding obvious invisible?

The OP stated they taste like composted coffee grounds. Do you enjoy the taste of composted coffee grounds? Is your caffeine addiction such that you would actually go out back, dig coffee grounds out of a composting pile, and make a cup with them?

Re: Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

It is pretentious to go out and imply you are better because you avoid those plebeian things.

Re: Hmm

[MightyYar]

Frosty Piss was attacked for making a silly joke about the flavor of K-Cups. Type44Q pointed out that McDonald's is popular despite being largely terrible. Any implication that they are somehow "better" was entirely imagined.

Re: Hmm

[MightyYar]

They are being ridiculous. A French press is just a screen and a plunger in a pot, and you can buy them at Target. Not even remotely pretentious - a $20 automatic drip machine is more complicated. It's like arguing that a fire pit is more pretentious than a fireplace.

Re:Hmm

[I7D]

So, I'm replying to you but really I could reply to anybody here regarding this. I don't get why Keurig is being painted in such a bad light here. I mean the process is pretty standard, hot water being poured through coffee grounds, but there are a ton Keurig compatible coffee brands, like DD and Starbucks and all those. Isn't a little air-tight pod with coffee grounds preferable to a bag in your cabinet (or freezer) that you take from day to day over the course of a week? Wouldn't the Keurig be fresher and better overall? I'd like to say I could tell the difference between a Keurig cup and one I get from anywhere else. I put cream and sugar in when it's available so I'm sure that muddies the waters a bit as far as taste goes. Does it really come down to the quality of the coffee in the individual pods then, from each manufacturer or is Keurig really to blame?

Re:Hmm

[HornWumpus]

Coffee degases after roasting.

So the choices are: 1. Put a check valve on the container to allow gas out but not allow air in. 2. Let the coffee go stale in a bin before packing it in an airtight container.

Unless your K-cup/can etc has a way to let gas out, it is stale before packaging. There is still enough degassing that the K-cup are always slightly pressurized, otherwise you'd expect half the cups to have the foil pulled in based on barometric pressure differences.

Re:Hmm

[HornWumpus]

You can get good coffee from a Kurig.

You need a reusable k-cup and some good, fresh coffee. A large cup is two 'small cup cycles', fresh grounds for both of course.

Re: Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are the only one that drinks coffee and you want to save time, money, energy, why not just use a pour over kit? (I'd say french press, but then you'd have to add cleaning, so I guess that wouldn't be convenient)

I don't care what you use, if you want to use your Keurig knock yourself out. However, I have to say I have no idea why anyone uses a Keurig at all.

How is filling a machine with water and placing a pod in it and waiting for it to heat up "more convenient" than scooping some coffee into a filter and pouring boiling water over it?

You'd waste less energy, less time, and less water and have a much better cup of coffee just using a pour over and a filter. You can save even more money, and waste even less coffee and have an even better cup by buying a decent grinder and keeping the whole beans around. Coffee won't be as stale and keeps better longer. Buy an electric kettle and you'll have water at the proper temperature in probably half the time.

Keurig's aren't any more convenient than a 10 dollar pour over kit from a supermarket. They just created the illusion of convenience through marketing.

Re:Hmm

[LunaticTippy]

There is some pretty good instant coffee these days. Trader Joe's 100% Columbian is my favorite. It's good enough for me to drink black, and it is really enjoyable. I mostly drink it where making real coffee is too difficult - backpacking or a sailing trip.

It tastes much better to me and is far cheaper than pod people coffee.

Re: Hmm

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Anyone who thinks Keurig (or any other system using pre-packaged pods) is acceptable coffee clearly hasn't tried a moka pot, French press or Aeropress. The difference is absolutely ridiculous, it's hardly even fair to call it the same type of beverage.

Re:Hmm

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I've been told by several American expats that the instant coffee we get here in Scandinavia is vastly superior to the instant coffee you get in the US. I've never been in the US and tasted your instant coffee myself, but I imagine that's why instant coffee has such a bad rap over there, even through it's clearly preferred over mediocre drip coffee here. Even the baseline standard Nescafé tastes fine, as long as you ignore the enormous ethical issues associated with buying Nestlé products.

Then again, this was some years ago. I assume your instant coffee is actually drinkable now?

Re:Hmm

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Yeah, kinda. The coffee itself may be of decent quality, but it's still pre-ground, and the brewing process itself has some fundamental problems, such as limited volume, time, and pressure. It just isn't making full use of the quality of coffee you're using.

Re:Hmm

[KozmoStevnNaut]

And with all the effort you've taken to produce acceptable "koffee", you could have made a much superior cup of coffee in a French press, an Aeropress or a Moka pot.

Re:Hmm

[KozmoStevnNaut]

But you could be using a French press, an Aeropress, or a Moka pot instead, and have much better coffee with less waste.

Re:Hmm

[KozmoStevnNaut]

10-12 oz. is like twice a normal serving size, do all Americans drink their watered down coffee from buckets?

Legitimate question, I'm not just being an elitist shithead :-)

Re: Hmm

[MightyYar]

I do need to come out in defense of the Nespresso system. It's obviously not up to "burr grind your own beans and blow $2000 steam through them" standards, but it's a quite nice espresso. I'd take it over most espresso that I get in stores outside of dense urban areas with specialty coffee shops.

I've only tried the Aeropress once, and it was good - but I don't know that I could blindly identify how it was different. Definitely not worth all of the extra effort IMHO.

Re:Hmm

[HornWumpus]

Not really, I prefer the French press (actually the microwaveable 'brazil press'), but the Kurig is faster.

The thing that put me off the Kurig at work was seeing a lady filling the machine with her dirty coffee cup. Just nasty, cheap and selfish...it would have been no more work (and sanitary) just to fill the tank, but she just got the water she needed in her cup.

I should have gone Kinison on her...

Re: Hmm

[KozmoStevnNaut]

The Aeropress is the only coffee maker on which I've been able to make coffee with no bitterness at all, but it's a very fine line to tread. I do agree that it's a bit fiddly, I prefer my trusty Moka pot most days.

Re:Hmm

[TheRaven64]

I'm not from the US, so I can't comment on their instant coffee (it's not something that I've sought out to try when I've visited). Apparently the instant coffee that we get in the UK is pretty good by the standards of instant coffee, but it's still crap in comparison to the real thing.

Re:Hmm

[TheRaven64]

I don't get the coffee from a bag, I have a hopper on top of my grinder that stores about a week's worth of beans and grinds one cafetiere's worth at the touch of a button. Ground coffee loses its flavour very quickly. The main problem (ignoring the environmental aspects) with the Keurig machines is that the packaging is very expensive. To keep the costs down, they use cheap beans. For about a quarter of the price of a pod, you can buy an equivalent quantity of far higher quality beans. There's a similar problem with decaf: the process of decaffeination adds a noticeable cost, but companies don't want to sell decaf for more than the cost of normal coffee and so they use much cheaper beans for the decaf.

If you're going to spend a lot of money on coffee, you may as well drink decent coffee. Spending a lot of money on mediocre coffee seems silly.

Re:Hmm

[Mashiki]

Coffee and bad coffee.

Re:Hmm

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Sure, but when compared to the nasty drip filter coffee most people drink, it's about even in quality.

Re:Hmm

[internerdj]

I generally just avoid coffee if I'm awake enough to know things taste.

Re:Hmm

[datavirtue]

"Making coffee wasn't something that needed to be reinvented"

The market thought otherwise douche bag.

Evolution will fix it

[Anonymous Coward]

It bacteria can eat celulose, it will only be a matter of time before it eats man made polymers... all that lovely hydrocarbons, all that energy... if only it can be released.

Really, think how quickly bacteria evolve to overcome anti-biotics and we're facing a short time scale before plastics get eaten.

Probably somewhere in a dump, there is a bacteria eating K-cups and it probably happened faster than Keurig got off their ass and developed their 'recyclable' cup.

Re: Evolution will fix it

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that short, took bacteria nearly 300 million years to evolve to digest plant ligen (cellulose), this is why we have all that coal in the ground. Could be hundreds of millions of years before they can eat a single variety of plastic. Unlike trees all thatplastic will still be around.

Re: Evolution will fix it

[Z00L00K]

Better with re-usable pods instead.

Fill your own coffee in them.

Re: Evolution will fix it

[Jason Levine]

This is what my wife does. She won a Keurig and began using (and tossing away) a ton of those pods. Then, she realized she could buy a reusable pod (2 actually since they came together), buy the coffee she likes in bulk, and make it just the way she likes it. It takes slightly longer (cleaning out the pod and filling it up takes a minute at most) but the result is coffee that she likes more, which is less expensive, and which results in less waste clogging up our landfills. It's a win all around (except for the profits for the companies that sell one-time-then-trash-it pods).

Re: Evolution will fix it

[NotAPK]

Of course your wife is only one-step away from using one of these small espresso machines. Instead of a pod there is a durable metal cup attached to the handle - it unclamps, you knock out the old grounds, rinse with water, and refill in seconds (not minutes) and then it clamps back to the machine and you get your cup of coffee with just the press of a button.

While the effort is admirable, once anyone starts faffing with refillable pods you may as well just use a real machine. Let your Keurig runs its course, but once it breaks, take a good look at a real espresso machine.

Re: Evolution will fix it

[Anonymous Coward]

"ligen"??

Re: Evolution will fix it

[KozmoStevnNaut]

So why not just use a French press, an Aeropress, or a Moka pot instead of a hopeless piece of overpriced electronic "koffee" maker that will inevitably break?

Re: Evolution will fix it

[Jason Levine]

As I said in my comment, we won the Keurig. We wouldn't have bought one otherwise. She initially liked the pod options, but quickly realized how expensive and wasteful it was to buy coffee that way. That's why we moved to the reusable pod and bulk coffee that she refills the pod with (and enjoys more than the pre-filled pods). When this Keurig breaks, we'll look into a different machine (not a Keurig). So far, it's lasted about 5 years so that's not bad for something we didn't pay for.

Bite the bullet

[Anonymous Coward]

Design a new machine. People will eventually switch over, especially the vocal save-the-planet types.

Re:Bite the bullet

[FlyHelicopters]

Design a new machine. People will eventually switch over, especially the vocal save-the-planet types.

They don't sell current machines, what good would a new one do?

Oh, excuse me, the 2.0 crap? Yea, not gonna buy a DRM coffee machine.

So this doesn't really help, since I'm not switching from the original.

Re:Bite the bullet

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you feel our planet does not need saving for future generations?

Re:Bite the bullet

[sumdumass]

The problem with a new machine is the competition for shelf space. The new cups would have to be placed alongside the existing cups until enough people made the switch that you wouldn't take a large financial hit.

There are probably a lot of people who sunk the money into the old machine that simply won't be interested in buying the new one should they be forced into another coffee maker purchase. This also has to be a consideration in the process because they make quite a lot from selling the coffee. It is likely cheaper to purchase a drip coffee maker and throw half a pot or more away once you consider the costs of the machines and coffee.

Re:Bite the bullet

[thinkwaitfast]

I use a coffee pot that I found in a yard sale that dates back to he 60's or 70's. My main coffee I bought in Mexico in 2002. I'm sure it has been recycled at least 3,000 times.

Re:Bite the bullet

[PopeRatzo]

There are probably a lot of people who sunk the money into the old machine that simply won't be interested in buying the new one should they be forced into another coffee maker purchase

If you bought a k-cup coffeemaker, then you've earned whatever's coming to you.

Seriously, didn't they seem like a terrible idea from the very beginning?

Re:Bite the bullet

[Ol Olsoc]

Design a new machine. People will eventually switch over, especially the vocal save-the-planet types.

I use biodegradable paper filters and use the coffee grounds on the Azaleas in the yard. Maybe this is a good machine for lonely people as well.

Re:Bite the bullet

[gl4ss]

save the planet types wouldn't have one in the first place.

the machines are basically free anyways compared to cost of using the pods.. and there's alternatives already on the market that can be recycled / composted.

however, it doesn't really even matter if the garbage handling in the area is properly done and it ends up being properly burned and turned into clean energy(not carbon free but clean in the sense that it doesn't pollute the country that much). you know norway is already importing garbage....

Re:Bite the bullet

[Anonymous Coward]

I know someone who already has a reusable plastic insert for Kuerig. Maybe Keurig's problem is finding a reusable cup that they can still milk for mega profit.
Rinse, spit, flush, pour - anything consumable = $$

Re: Bite the bullet

[bestweasel]

Cafeteriere for me and no filters, though the grounds do go in the bin.

The only reason to use one of those machines is if you have no choice, or maybe if your hands shake so much in the mornings that you can't measure out the coffee.

Re:Bite the bullet

[FlyHelicopters]

It may be beside the point if the cups keep rising in price.

Back when I started using it, the cups were quite reasonable. I'm tempted to price going back to making a pot at a time with grounds.

Re:Bite the bullet

[sumdumass]

Not really. They actually sound like a great idea (the concept anyways) if you are throwing coffee out or prefer flavored coffee.

  I even thought about getting one a time or two. I decided it was cheaper and easier to just stop and grab a cup of coffee on my way somewhere because that is about the only time I drink it anymore. But the attraction was not having to mess around with an entire pot of coffee or stopping somewhere.

Re:Bite the bullet

[Anonymous Coward]

No

Re:Bite the bullet

[Anonymous Coward]

Save the planet types would just take instant coffee, pour it into a cup, and depending on their preference, milk and/or sugar, add boiling water, then maybe freeze it, and finally have it.

Re:Bite the bullet

[Zontar The Mindless]

Seriously, didn't they seem like a terrible idea from the very beginning?

The very first time I heard of them, my reaction was, "Yet another bunch of marketroids trying to entice me into dependence on their proprietary and completely unnecessary 'system'. Thanks, but no thanks."

My hand grinder and plunger pot have lifetimes measured in years, and do not require the purchase of any consumables other than coffee beans and water--not even filters. Nor electricity, for that matter--any method of heating the water will do.

Re:Bite the bullet

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheaper machines, more expensive pods.
Remind anybody why they don't print anymore?

Sadly my yard isn't really big enough to support my bad habits. Best we got the old mans tree was about 1kg of beans. With harvests like that I would need at least 20 trees for a best case ;)

Re:Bite the bullet

[Anonymous Coward]

Design a new machine. People will eventually switch over, especially the vocal save-the-planet types.

They don't sell current machines, what good would a new one do?

Oh, excuse me, the 2.0 crap? Yea, not gonna buy a DRM coffee machine.

So this doesn't really help, since I'm not switching from the original.

Not that I advocate getting one of their machines, but they finally did capitulate on that. At least partway, anyway. They no longer charge other coffee manufacturers (or device manufacturers) for the privilege of making compatible pods and they even make their own refillable filter for it now.

Re:Bite the bullet

[FictionPimp]

If I had mod points I'd mod this interesting. I didn't know any of that. I'll have to do some research.

Re:Bite the bullet

[KGIII]

At home, I have a Bunn. It's hooked to the water lines and gives me hot water for tea or a pot of coffee really quickly as it keeps the water hot. It is awesome.

Re:Bite the bullet

[KGIII]

Umm... Most coffee makers of the drip variety actually have this neat invention where they have lines on the side. If you use those lines and do a little bit of math - you won't have to make a whole pot of coffee. It's a fairly new technology, called "measurement." I'm sure someone will help you out if you need it. You might be able to find a book at the library.

Re:Bite the bullet

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had mod points I'd mod this interesting. I didn't know any of that. I'll have to do some research.

I went and did a little more research on this and slightly fell for the Keurig "newspeak" on it. It's not all roses and sunshine, but they have improved on their DRM stance considerably.

First, the 2.0 My K-Cup is real and allows you to use your own grounds. I've got a 3rd party one that lets me make k-carafes (though I rarely use it).

Other companies, like San Francisco Bay, seem to have developed their own ink that works in the 2.0 brewers.

Keurig is "reaching out" to other companies to help them with the licensing. This is where I misunderstood things. Probably not free, but much better terms cause they figured something is better than nothing at all :)

Re:Bite the bullet

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, excuse me, the 2.0 crap? Yea, not gonna buy a DRM coffee machine.

So this doesn't really help, since I'm not switching from the original.

Just tape the foil from a branded k-cup under the photocell and use whatever cups you want. Problem solved.

Sucks, but my wife really wanted a Kuerig and I couldn't find a 1.0.

Re:Bite the bullet

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Try a French Press, an Aeropress, or a Moka pot. So much easier and much less likely to go wrong or break. And no DRM ;-)

If you go for the Moka pot, see if you can try out both the classic Express model and the newer Brikka model. The Brikka uses a special valve that allows for higher pressure, and when used correctly, it produces something akin to the crema you get on a proper espresso.

Re:Bite the bullet

[FlyHelicopters]

:) Easier? I've looked at pictures of a French Press, that looks like work.

I like pressing a button and having coffee! :)

I did find a less expensive option for K-Cups, I ordered a box to see if they taste any good.

Otherwise, it'll be a Mr. Coffee drip coffee maker, because again, I can press a button. :)

Yes, yes, it isn't the best... but by the time I'm done putting cream and sugar in, does it matter? :)

Re:Bite the bullet

[KozmoStevnNaut]

For a French press you pour in the coffee, add hot water, wait a minute or two, and press the large button on top :-)

I'd say that's about as easy as good coffee gets.

Re:Bite the bullet

[FlyHelicopters]

For a French press you pour in the coffee, add hot water, wait a minute or two, and press the large button on top :-)

I'd say that's about as easy as good coffee gets.

Are there any that I can set on a timer and have them brew at 7am in the morning automatically so when I walk downstairs, a pot of fresh coffee is ready? :)

Re:Bite the bullet

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Yeah, it's called a spouse or children ;-)

Re:Bite the bullet

[samwichse]

Alternately, you can just buy a DRM free K-cup machine from Mr. Coffee.

Got my wife one, it's half the price of the Keurig 2.0 crap, and has no problems with any brand of reusable cup we stick in it (we got a nice stainless steel one).

Sam

Now could they just make the coffee not suck?

[Narcocide]

OOOH! Instant coffee slam! BURRRRN!

You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[fragMasterFlash]

These k-cup compatible pods are ~90% biodegradable. Keurig should license their design post haste.

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[Anonymous Coward]

"I shit you not!"
- Keurig

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[93 Escort Wagon]

These k-cup compatible pods are ~90% biodegradable. Keurig should license their design post haste.

Those are the ones we buy, actually. On Amazon they're relatively inexpensive ("relative" to other K-cups... not the good ol' coffee pot).

I was against getting a Keurig, but my wife really wanted one - so I eventually relented. I really hate the thing. It probably makes more sense for people who don't drink much coffee; but, if you were a pot-a-day family, the cost of replacing that with a Keurig is ludicrous. We're spending easily $50 a month, just on coffee! And it doesn't seem like those things actually save you any effort - it's just that it's spaced out throughout the day. If it made really good coffee, that might sway me... but it's worse than brewing a pot.

I like to tell people that, if my wife pre-deceases me, even before I call the mortician I'm putting that Keurig in the trash. I hate it that much.

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[PopeRatzo]

I like to tell people that, if my wife pre-deceases me, even before I call the mortician I'm putting that Keurig in the trash. I hate it that much.

I hear you. They make bad coffee, are more expensive and mess up the environment.

You get a french press and you don't even have to buy filters. Hell, I can still make a decent cup in an old fashioned percolator that'll taste better than a k-cup machine.

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[Ol Olsoc]

It probably makes more sense for people who don't drink much coffee; but, if you were a pot-a-day family, the cost of replacing that with a Keurig is ludicrous. We're spending easily $50 a month, just on coffee! And it doesn't seem like those things actually save you any effort - it's just that it's spaced out throughout the day. If it made really good coffee, that might sway me... but it's worse than brewing a pot.

I like to tell people that, if my wife pre-deceases me, even before I call the mortician I'm putting that Keurig in the trash. I hate it that much.

Exactly.

Where we have our board meetings, the people have one of these. Nothing more annnoying than taking half the meeting just to get everyone a cup. It's the decision whether to get coffee early, and have it get cold while you politely wait for everyone else to get a hot cup but smell it for a long time before you can get it. Soooo convenient a solution to the age old problem of making a pot timed to be finished right before the meeting starts, and everyone getting a cup at the same time. It is mediocre coffee at that.

So I get a soda. Yet the things are popular, why I don't know. Then again so is the overly brewed moldy mud tasting crap that Starbucks sells. And I'm not remotely a coffee snob.

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[Ol Olsoc]

Hell, I can still make a decent cup in an old fashioned percolator that'll taste better than a k-cup machine.

Yes - percolators can make excellent coffee when made by people who know what they are doing. I've made some great stuff in a perc on a old Coleman's stove that gets raves.

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[tlhIngan]

You can buy single cup coffee machines that make small cups of coffee. They have a bean hopper for pre-roasted unground beans and they grind them, press water through them and dispense a cup of coffee.

Basically the convenience of a Keurig, with no waste (the grounds can be composted directly). You just need to keep it filled with beans and water.

They work almost like an espresso machine, except they are a general coffee machine which can make espresso, or regular coffee.

The only catch is they are EXPENSIVE.A keurig is under $100. These machines can easily be $600+. But beans are cheap and a cup costs just the few cents. They are fully automated for complete convenience other than loading beans, filling the ater tank and emptying the grounds container.

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[hvdh]

Those machines seem to be expensive in the US. In Germany, you can buy 10 different models for under 270€ (= 305 USD, including 19% VAT), and some time last year, Amazon Germany listed several models for around 200 USD. I bought one for 180€, and the ROI vs. coffee cups was within a year.

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[TheRaven64]

The more expensive drip filter machines have a vacuum flask for storing the coffee rather than a hot plate. As a result, the coffee doesn't taste burned if you leave it for a while (but does stay hot for a few hours) and, as a result, you don't even need to time it particularly carefully for the start of the meeting.

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[serviscope_minor]

Apart from filling with decent coffee of the correct grind, how do you need to know what you're doing? My inlaws have and olde fashinde percolator---ceramic 1960s thing and it's great. You load with decent coffee[*] hit go and when it stops thunking you get a great cup of coffee out. Easy to clean too. I really don't understand why they've gone so far out of use.

[*] It's not in the fashion here to have coffee grinders in supermarkets, so you either have to grind your own or go to a specialist vendor of coffee which will grind in store. Fortunately that means that to get the right grind, the coffee is usually better too. I usually go to the Monmouth coffee company to buy coffee for the percolator. They always are suspicious and ask me to describe the machine because more people think the stove top espresso pots are percolators than have percolators any more, and they don't want to sell me the wrong grind.

I also kind of hate the in-store grinders because someone always ends up putting that nasty flavoured syrup coated shit in the ginder which contaminates everything else with its nasty flavour.

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[Anonymous Coward]

Bit of advice? Drop that Keurig rubbish.

The espresso machine I use at home uses (freshly) ground coffee. There are no coffee pods, the leftover coffee grounds are 100% biodegradable, there is no vendor lock-in of any kind and the coffee tastes absolutely fantastic.

Your move.

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[110010001000]

ugh. A home espresso machine? I only drink coffee from professional machines prepared and delivered by Himalayan virgins.

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[Anonymous Coward]

We use San Fransisco Bay coffee too.

Partially because they're cheap and partially because they're less waste added to the environment. It's not the best tasting brand, but it is acceptable when I'm feeling too lazy to use the French Press. (I'll usually only use that once a day for my morning brew- after that I settle for the convenience of Keurig).

SF Bay Coffee pods do have one major drawback though, they're not vacuum sealed. Once you open the bag they start to slowly degrade. One of the points of the Keurig K-Cups is that they're sealed so that no oxygen can get in and degrade the coffee.

Not a problem in my household, we drink it quick enough that it isn't a problem.

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[CanadianMacFan]

I have a Breville coffee machine that lets you either make a single cup (which lets you adjust the amount of coffee for the size of the cup) or a pot of coffee (again you can specify the number of cups brewed). You can adjust the strength of the brew. It grinds the beans and has a water reservoir like you mention.

It's not cheap but if you go to Amazon and use a browser extension from CamelCamelCamel you can take a look at the price history and then set up a price watch to get it when it goes on sale.

And you want some awesome coffee then check out Pilot Coffee Roasters in Toronto. I order my coffee from them and have it shipped to me. It's ruined all of the coffee shops in town because their coffee is so much better. https://www.pilotcoffeeroaster...

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[KGIII]

My brother has one of 'em and uses some odd brand. Buggered if I know what the brand is but it's a medium-dark roast that they usually buy. It's actually not bad - I'd almost call it good. He gets them through the company he works for. They have the machine(s) in the office and some company delivers 'em. He orders a case of 'em through that same company - so it's not some rare, upper-market, stuff.

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[Ol Olsoc]

Apart from filling with decent coffee of the correct grind, how do you need to know what you're doing? My inlaws have and olde fashinde percolator---ceramic 1960s thing and it's great. You load with decent coffee[*] hit go and when it stops thunking you get a great cup of coffee out. Easy to clean too.

That was probably an electric perk? I always forget about those, so you are right about that. I've seen people who think they have to boil their perc coffee. Put that brat on high and uck. Which is what I was thinking about.

I really don't understand why they've gone so far out of use.

Marketing maybe? I dunno - in a world where people go to great lengths to make the Barista jump though hoops, that the tiny bit of technique needed for perking coffee - even less if an electric perk - doesn't make sense.

I also kind of hate the in-store grinders because someone always ends up putting that nasty flavoured syrup coated shit in the grinder which contaminates everything else with its nasty flavour.

Now THAT's disgusting! Is there some rationale for that, rather than putting the stuff in like normal people do - after it is brewed?

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[KGIII]

It's okay. I actually *like* a brand of instant coffee. Taster's Choice. Yup... I well and truly like it. It's not even a "don't mind it" situation but an actual like. I buy it on a regular basis and it's great for when I just want a cup of coffee or have a desire for that specifically. Just plain ol' Taster's Choice, some cream, and a little sugar. Sometimes, just black. Sometimes just cream. Never just sugar.

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[GuB-42]

Percolators tend to over-extract coffee, resulting in a bitter, burnt taste. In other words, they are terrible.
The problem is : the best part of the brew often comes from the beginning of the extraction. And because the percolator reheats and recirculate the brew, a lot of it is wasted while a lot of the bitter stuff (which include caffeine) at the end remains. It is easy to tell : if it smells good during the brew process, that because all the aroma goes into the air rather than into the cup.
There are ways to tame the percolator by carefully monitoring the time and temperature but most of the times, you will get a better result by simply using a cheap drip coffee maker.

Of course, if you are one of the few who really like percolator coffee, you don't have to change your methods, it is all a matter of taste after all.
And no matter what technique you use, the right coffee, fresh and properly ground, will always make a huge difference.

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[Electrawn]

There is a market solution to your problem:

http://www.bedbathandbeyond.co...

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[Anonymous Coward]

ugh. A home espresso machine? I only drink coffee from professional machines prepared and delivered by Himalayan virgins.

+1 FUNNY

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[The-Ixian]

Keurig does have a full pot version called the Bolt, with recyclable cups. The filter is attached to the foil top so you peel that off and toss that in the trash then put the plastic part in the recycling. It is a decent cup of coffee and the machines are very brain dead easy to use... but they are prone to breaking.

We ended up going back to the old drip coffee makers at our company after having to call service on them a few times. Also there is a supply chain problem with those particular sized cups.

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[serviscope_minor]

That was probably an electric perk?

Yeah. After a surprisingly small amount of googling, I found the model:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vint...

I'm guessing that this was a pretty popular model at the time they got married (it was a weddig present). It's even the same colour as the ebay one.

Now THAT's disgusting! Is there some rationale for that, rather than putting the stuff in like normal people do - after it is brewed?

Not sure. My local Kroger (a Smiths) had it. It was kinda vile. It was this sort of sweet sticky syrup coating everything lots of sugar plus some flavouring, probably a cheap&nasty one. There were several available. But yeah it's nasty stuff and I don't understand the rationale.

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[Anonymous Coward]

But then what will (s)he have to bitch about? remember, (s)he really hates that thing!

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[Anonymous Coward]

Weird. My experience is the opposite. Always throwing out the second pot. Second half of every pot not fresh. I want coffee, wife doesn't. Etc. etc. Love the K-cup machine!

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait... Are the machines prepared and delivered by the virgins? Or is it the coffee?

Re:You don't have to use keurig brand cups

[serviscope_minor]

Interesting you should say that, my experience is not exactly the same. OK, so first things first, with good coffee and good technique, any method produces a nice cup. Espresso is probably the worse in that it's really sensitive to both the coffee quality and the operator skill. That's why many (most?) espressos are really really nasty, but a good one is delightful. I find that of all the tehniques I've used the most, the cafeitere is less sensitive to quality than filter coffee which is less sensitive than a moka pot which itself is less sensitive than a full espresso.

I'm not 100% sure where a percolator lies because I use one rarely (only when visiting my inlaws) that I've not really tried it much with poor quality/old stale coffee. When filled with good coffee, it produces a truly excellent cup. Bear in mind it's an electric perc, not a stove top one, so it's under thermostatic temperature control. The steam pump which pushes the water also heats it up a bit, and the entire thing stops when the coffee reaches the desired temperature. Well, I think so---this is based on not taking it apart! It's no PID controller or anything, but it does seem decently consistent.

I almost always have it filled with a light roast south American or Indonesian coffee, so being less burned than a dark roast, there's less of the burnt taste to extract, but I've never had it produce nasty burned coffee. I don't tend to use the African coffees since I find them a bit acidic and I don't like the flavour as much.

But yes, basically I agree that good, fresh coffee properly ground is key. If you don't have that, then a cafietere is probably one of the least worst options.

Corporate bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Keurig: Backpedaling with Corporate Bullshit

Jeez

[Anonymous Coward]

Good job America for not intervening for 10 years when a market failure that allows a company to pollute the planet with fuck knows how many tens of billions of pieces of crap is allowed to continue.

Re:Jeez

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Or I just like playing AAA games.

No I'm not going to play "Tux" to make a point. That point will never be heard.

Re:Jeez

[tepples]

You can play AAA games on a FreeBSD-based operating system, be it OS X or PlayStation 4.

Re:Jeez

[Anonymous Coward]

How is OS X FreeBSD-based? Moreover, there are far more AAA games for Linux than there are for Mac OS X.

Re:Jeez

[tepples]

How is OS X FreeBSD-based?

The userland of Darwin is based on that of FreeBSD.

Moreover, there are far more AAA games for Linux than there are for Mac OS X.

As of April 2014, twice as many Steam games were available for OS X as for Linux. Is there a source for this having changed in the past two years? Which statistics should I be looking at, or which Google queries should I be using to find them?

Or you could use paper cups instead

[jsse]

It might surprise some hardcore environmentalists that using paper cups, or just using more paper on anything else, might be more environment friendly than you might imagine. (The following facts might be considered as flamebait again but please read on with patient before you mod.)

Papers are not made from cutting wood in rain forest anymore (some furniture, on the other hand, still are). 95% of the raw materials in paper are coming from trees, and these trees are carefully planned to grow and harvest. Various "Tree Funds" were raised every 10-15 years for raising money in building such tree farms.

Unfortunately, these "Tree Funds" are very sensitive to market. When there are less demand in papers, these funds would diminish, and in turn less tree farms would be built. Less tree farms, less trees, less oxygen-producers, more carbon dioxide, more severe the green house effect and so forth.

Encouraging paper-saving would probably lead to more green house gases. The irony...

Re:Or you could use paper cups instead

[vovin]

Papers are not made from cutting wood in rain forest anymore

Paper never was ... as such a thing was never economically viable.

For the last, oh, 80 years at least, all paper has been made from trees grown for paper and lumber mills.
Oh and your recycled paper? It is *more* environmentally destructive to produce, and will always be. Re-use it, compost it, or burn it.

Re:Or you could use paper cups instead

[TheRaven64]

Oh and your recycled paper? It is *more* environmentally destructive to produce, and will always be. Re-use it, compost it, or burn it.

Why? Not having looked into the processes involved in exhaustive detail, my naive understanding is that you make recycled paper by shredding and bleaching old paper. To make new paper, you need to plant trees, let them grow, then cut them down, mulch them, add a few other things and then go through basically the same process as making recycled paper. What are the extra processes involved in making recycled paper that aren't required for new paper and offset the other costs?

Re:Or you could use paper cups instead

[maeka]

What are the extra processes involved in making recycled paper that aren't required for new paper

There are no extra processes except the less efficient collection, sorting, and delivery to the mill of post consumer paper from disperse sources. But I rather suspect that is not what GPP is pointing to as "more enviromentally destructive", rather I suspect it is the massive increase in bleaching needs for PCR paper.

"Deinking" takes a lot more bleach than raw wood fibers do.
 

Re:Or you could use paper cups instead

[Anonymous Coward]

But how bad is that with the chlorine-free bleaching that has been the norm for decades?

Re:Or you could use paper cups instead

[GuB-42]

Paper is good but paper cups often have a plastic lining to keep them waterproof.
I don't know how environment-friendly it is.

Re: Or you could use paper cups instead

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not sure why you believe chlorine-free bleaching is the norm. It is far more expensive and something one has to seek out.

Re: Or you could use paper cups instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Elemental chlorine bleaching has been banned in Europe since the 1980s and totally chlorine-free has had an over 50% market share for a long time. Moreover, in recycling paper, chlorine and chlorine compounds have never been very common.

Re:Or you could use paper cups instead

[KGIII]

> For the last, oh, 80 years at least, all paper has been made from trees grown for paper and lumber mills.

No, it's not. Source: I own a shit-ton of old paper mill property. There's still plenty of natural regrowth that is harvested, not from farms. Some wood is still actively harvested from the land I own and some of that goes to the paper mill in Jay, Maine. Some of it is replant but not all, not even close to all. This is not unique, there are many others just like mine. The trees weren't grown for paper and lumber mills. They just grew. They've been "just growing" on their own since before the replant laws went into effect. They're not grown for any special purpose.

I'm not actually sure why you'd say such a thing, actually. Yes, some is grown specifically for paper and lumber. It's certainly not all, it's not even close to all. Pine that's no good for lumber gets chipped or goes to paper. There's nothing special about it, it's not actually replant, it's not a tree farm. Now *some* of the property is tree farm and is all replanted. That's much newer growth.

Re:Or you could use paper cups instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on the assembly that holds the cup. My Senseo uses compostable paper pads, which don't need to be waterproof because the assembly itself already avoids leaking. And it brews better coffee than a Keurig, but that's a separate issue. What I'm saying is that Keurig could modify it's cup holding assembly to avoid leaking, perhaps using a reusable insert, there's no reason Keurig cannot employ fully compostable paper pads.

Re:Or you could use paper cups instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh and your recycled paper? It is *more* environmentally destructive to produce, and will always be. Re-use it, compost it, or burn it.

I'll let the homeowner's association know that I can open a compost, or start burning trash. Seriously, consider the non-fringe consumer once in awhile.

Re:Or you could use paper cups instead

[nephilimsd]

It's been a while since I researched how recycling works, but if I remember correctly, for paper products, the main reason it's not terribly efficient is because of the ratios required to get a product that people will actually use. For starters, mixing recycled content with new content doesn't work. To get a reasonable grade of paper out of the end process, a certain (fairly high) percentage of the paper needed to be clean going into the process. So when you read, "30% post-consumer recycled" paper, the other 70% is also recycled, but it's recycled from previously unused paper. In the end, this doesn't result in savings, rather, it increases the amount of total paper required as well as the total chemical treatment of paper to make that "30% post consumer" feel-good number.

Re:Or you could use paper cups instead

[angel'o'sphere]

Less tree farms, less trees, less oxygen-producers, more carbon dioxide, more severe the green house effect and so forth.
That is nonsense.
Trees, Oxygen and CO2 is a zero sum game.
Rotting paper (or burning it) and rotting trees just produce the exact same amount of CO2 they consumed during growth.
And: producing paper consumes water and energy, so saving paper conserves the environment.

However: in comparison with other alternatives it might still be a good choice.

Re:Or you could use paper cups instead

[willy_me]

The coffee would age quickly after being packaged. Packages should be air-tight and preferably packaged in an environment lacking oxygen. A paper cup could be great if purchased frozen and defrosted before use - but that is less convenient and defeats the point of using K-cups.

Re:Or you could use paper cups instead

[maeka]

Well, it depends on what your end product is and how well filtered your input stream is. There is a reason my city pays to have mixed paper picked up at the curb yet my office is paid to set out bins of only white office paper.

Re: Or you could use paper cups instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Elemental chlorine bleaching has been banned in Europe since the 1980s

Which did little but close mills and increase the amount of imports.

Amazing...

[Anonymous Coward]

How much fucking money people will waste not doing something for themselves they mostly could totally do, do better, and with less waste, at far less cost, making people rich for giving them crap.

I have yet to find a cup of coffee that DIDN'T come from a pour-over coffee maker that didn't taste like bitter, burnt shit.

Re:Amazing...

[thinkwaitfast]

If you don't make people rich, we can we complain about rich people? duh.

Compostable isn't hard

[Anonymous Coward]

When I make a cup of coffee I use compostable coffee grounds with either a reusable metal filter or a compostable paper one. For the water, a teakettle works nicely, or if I'm in a hurry, I can microwave some water.

The disposable K-Cups aren't the only wasteful part: the expensive, shoddily-made hot-water machines with built-in DRM are the height of unnecessary American appliance insanity.

Reuseable K-Cup insert

[Todd Knarr]

There are inserts that fit the Keurigs that you can fill with your own ground coffee, then empty after it's brewed. I'd love to use them, it'd give me a wider variety of coffees. The only problem is that none of them seal properly, water and grounds come out the top and make a mess and the leakage interferes with the brewing. If Keurig really wanted to solve the problem, put the research into modifying the MyK-Cup so it seals properly and the water flows through the grounds rather than off the top and through the open mesh screen.

Re:Reuseable K-Cup insert

[Anonymous Coward]

But then you wouldn't have to pay Keurig 70 cents every time you make a cup of coffee. They don't want to solve any problems with the reusable cups.

Re:Reuseable K-Cup insert

[unrtst]

There are inserts that fit the Keurigs that you can fill with your own ground coffee, then empty after it's brewed. I'd love to use them, it'd give me a wider variety of coffees.

These have been around forever in a slightly larger size in the form of any-other-coffee-maker-ever.

AFAICT, there are 2.5 selling points to the Keurigs:
1. single cup. It's possible to do this with many other coffee makers / techniques, but the big 12 cup drip machines do this poorly.
2. no messing with grinding, measuring, filling grounds, and cleaning them up. Just pop it in, brew, and chuck it out when done. This feature goes away if you refill or manually fill.
2.5. water hookups / reservoir. This is great in hotels when they are hooked into the main lines already. It's also somewhat helpful at home if yours has a larger reservoir than 1 cup, so you don't have to refill it every time you brew. I'm only giving this half a point though, cause who really cares about this?

I'd make a recommendation on what to use instead, but it's pretty much anything else, just with my own preference thrown in. Choose from a 4 cup drip machine, single cup drip, french press (can even get a 1 cup one), cold brew, aeropress, chemex, moka, etc.

If you want to try a wider range of coffee's, just buy any of the other tools and use them. French press, for example, just needs hot water, and you put it and the grounds in the press, mix 'em up, wait, press a plunger, then pour your coffee. You can even get mini ones for single cup brewing, they're very affordable, and take up very little space. You have little to no excuse.

Re:Reuseable K-Cup insert

[duke_cheetah2003]

There are inserts that fit the Keurigs that you can fill with your own ground coffee, then empty after it's brewed. I'd love to use them, it'd give me a wider variety of coffees. The only problem is that none of them seal properly, water and grounds come out the top and make a mess and the leakage interferes with the brewing. If Keurig really wanted to solve the problem, put the research into modifying the MyK-Cup so it seals properly and the water flows through the grounds rather than off the top and through the open mesh screen.

I use a 3rd party reusable filter basket. It seals very good, I forget the brand name, but I know I got it at Wal-Mart and it's red plastic with a fine mesh screen, and hinged flip top. I've never had it leak grounds into my cup, and I've probably made well over a thousand cups of coffee with it and it's still working perfectly. They were a little pricey ($10 I think?) but well worth it. The reusable filter basket that Keurig makes isn't very good for the reasons you pointed out.

I fished a bit for you on google, and this guy looks a lot like mine: Perfect Pod Eco-Fill Deluxe Refilible Capsule with Permanent Etched Foil Filter For Keurig, 2-Pack

The plastic k-cups are pretty environmentally unfriendly, but the machines, when used appropriately are fantastic. I love mine.

On another note, San Francisco Bay brand coffee pods work in the older Keurig machines and are supposedly 100% biodegradable. My mother uses those because she's lazy, at least they're more responsible than the plastic ones.

Re:Reuseable K-Cup insert

[Anonymous Coward]

All of these selling points apply to a standard automatic espresso machine too. Now I have never encountered one of these Keurig devices, but I imagine from the description it's something similar to the Nespresso system: you put an expensive cup into a cheap device and you get something that is acceptable, but not great. It makes a lot of sense if you do not drink coffee but get visitors who do occasionally, but even if you drink only one cup a day, buying a decent automatic espresso machine and coffee beans is cheaper in the long run and provides far better coffee.

Re:Reuseable K-Cup insert

[CanadianMacFan]

I have a Breville coffee machine. It can brew a single cup at a time (adjustable for the type of cup) or a carafe where you can specify the number of cups to brew. It grinds the beans for you and has a 12 cup reservoir. After you make your coffee all you have to do is dump the used coffee grounds and wash the permanent filter. Every now and then you top up the water and beans depending on usage.

Day to day I just make one cup at a time. But when I have company over I use the carafe and make a pot. Always the same great coffee.

Re:Reuseable K-Cup insert

[Jason Levine]

2. no messing with grinding, measuring, filling grounds, and cleaning them up. Just pop it in, brew, and chuck it out when done. This feature goes away if you refill or manually fill.

My wife uses a reusable pod with her Keurig. She cleans out the old grounds, measures new ones in, and pops the pod back into the Keurig. The total time for this is about half a minute. Spending that extra time saves us a lot of money, results in less trash, and gives my wife a better cup of coffee.

Of course, Keurig isn't looking to make a pod that you can use a hundred times and refill every time with any bulk-purchased grounds. They're looking for one that they can only be used with Keurig-licensed grounds and which will be used a few times but then will require you to buy another pod (so they an still get repeat sales).

Re:Reuseable K-Cup insert

[houghi]

There are already machines where you are able to do this. It is called an espresso machine. You put grounded coffee in it per 1 or 2 cups and that's it. About the same price as a Keurig. Or as expensive as you want to make it.

Re:Reuseable K-Cup insert

[Camel Pilot]

Exactly... don't understand why keurig either. I have $300 espresso machine that has been used in our office for over 10 years... still produces a great shot sometimes even a God shot. Also have a Areo can't beat that for $30.

Re:Reuseable K-Cup insert

[RobinH]

The trick is to get the right kind. When my wife got a Keurig, I really didn't want to contribute to the k-cup trash pile so I looked around for a re-usable filter. I found the ekobrew one (which was stainless steel instead of plastic). I fill it to 3/4 full of Kirkland brand fine grind that I pick up at Costco and it works great. Been using it for over a year now with no problems. I've heard that the plastic ones don't work as well.

Re:Reuseable K-Cup insert

[RobinH]

I guess I should mention that I don't use the paper filters for them either - just dump the grinds into the cup and brew it. The holes seem to big for fine grind, but I hardly ever get grinds in the coffee. If you're worried, get medium grind.

Re:Reuseable K-Cup insert

[unrtst]

2. no messing with grinding, measuring, filling grounds, and cleaning them up. Just pop it in, brew, and chuck it out when done. This feature goes away if you refill or manually fill.

My wife uses a reusable pod with her Keurig. She cleans out the old grounds, measures new ones in, and pops the pod back into the Keurig. The total time for this is about half a minute. Spending that extra time saves us a lot of money, results in less trash, and gives my wife a better cup of coffee.

This is EXACTLY the situation I am calling out as making absolutely zero sense!
Oh sure, it saves you money compared to paying for the disposable Keurig k-cups, but what is the benefit compared to ANY other coffee brewing method?!?! As you noted, she's already doing the measuring, filling grounds, and cleaning up after them (and even going so far as to wash the reusable filter, as opposed to alternative methods that don't require a filter wash), so why use a Keurig at all?

I'm having trouble thinking of any other comparable situation... like buying a fridge, paying extra for the ice maker with built in filter, purposefully not hooking up the water line to it, and then buying bottled water to manually fill it when you want ice - just get an ice tray if that's what you want! or, in this case, just get any other readily available, cheap and simple coffee maker.

Re:Reuseable K-Cup insert

[Jason Levine]

Right now, for us, the answer to "Why use a Keurig at all" is "We won it a few years ago and it's still working." Our options right now are: Get a new coffee maker (not really worth it until the Keurig dies), use the Keurig pods (not worth the money), or use the reusable cups. We're using the reusable cups until the Keurig dies. At that point, we'll find another way to make single cups of coffee. (We need to make single cups because my wife's the only one who drinks coffee.)

Meanwhile

[Crashmarik]

http://www.amazon.com/Ekobrew-...

Someone came up with the idea of a refillable K-Cup

You really want to do something about the "Problem" there you go. Otherwise you can buy "Recyclable" K-Cups that never will be.

Me I just use these things

http://www.amazon.com/Braun-Pe...

Damned if I am going to pay two bucks a cup when all is said and done for coffee I make myself.

Re: Meanwhile

[Anonymous Coward]

"Damned if I am going to pay two bucks a cup when all is said and done for coffee I make myself."

Damned if I am going to pay two pocket lints for a cup of coffee when I can dig my neighbor's coffee grounds out of his trash, right next to the dog shit.

Re:Meanwhile

[phantomfive]

I feel like going through the effort of re-filling a k-cup kind of defeats the purpose (which is convenience). At that point, you might as well get an espresso machine.

Re:Meanwhile

[AthanasiusKircher]

Except an espresso machine will cost a LOT more. Also, using your own grounds costs a lot less (no more 50 cents+ for 5-10 cents of stale grounds), you can grind fresh if you want, you can use whatever coffee you want, etc. Bottom line: a lot cheaper, better for the environment, and is actually more convenient in some ways. (And if you buy a number of reusable filter inserts, you just rinse quickly and throw in the dishwasher). Personally I hate Keurigs but I was given one quite a few years back... And someone else in my house likes to use it. This is the only sensible way to use them from my perspective.

Re:Meanwhile

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't tell if you're joking about the last comment.

I have a Keurig and a drip brewer and a coffee addiction. I bought the Keurig for a terrible job which I have since left. Given my habit, I am sensitive to the amount of time making the coffee takes. I use the Keurig on weekdays and the drip machine on weekends. I prefer fresh ground beans but I don't usually buy them, as an example. I don't have experience with refillable keurigs, but after reading this article and thinking about my wife starting a compost pile, I am buying a setup on Amazon with paper filters right now. If I keep the ground coffee by the machine, I can't see it being a huge hassle to change the filter and add a scoop of coffee instead of popping in a cup.

Re:Re-useable K-Cup inserts work really well

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmmm. I bought 10 reuseable cups direct from China for $10 and they work well. Not perfectly because the wire mesh is a little too large for my favorite grind so sediment gets through. I could supplement with a paper filter but don't mind sediment 'cause I drink loose leaf tea as well. I kinda like a bit of sediment.

The Original Recyclable Coffee Machine

[jshackney]

Bialetti Moka Express:

• reusable
• makes coffee you can taste
• makes one cup at a time
• grounds are easily recycled

Re:The Original Recyclable Coffee Machine

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the coffee tastes like ass and it's hard to clean. Aeropress all the way.

Re:The Original Recyclable Coffee Machine

[serviscope_minor]

I've got one, it's nice. It's a little faffier than a cafetiere though. I've also seen someone use an aeropress in my office. That seems to be more or less self cleaning too which is nice, though you need a stack of those disposable filters for it.

Re:The Original Recyclable Coffee Machine

[Anonymous Coward]

There are metal reusable filters for the aeropress that apparently work quite well. I had a pack of 360 paper filters with mine, but when I finish them I'm thinking of trying a metal one.

Re: The Original Recyclable Coffee Machine

[mrmaster]

There are paper and metal filters for the aeropress. The paper filters can get quite a few uses out of them before I have to toss it. Never liked Keurig coffee and it seems that every office has one these days and most new hotels put them in the rooms. Even when Keurig was new and trying to pedal their wears in the mall I didn't really the enjoy the taste. This was even before I became a coffee snob.

Re:The Original Recyclable Coffee Machine

[Anonymous Coward]

You can buy reusable fine wire mesh filters for the aeropress. Plus those filters are tiny, a couple inch stack is about a year's worth, even for regular users. The manual says you can reuse even the paper ones, rinse and install it back in the press to dry (so it keeps the shape).

Re:The Original Recyclable Coffee Machine

[KozmoStevnNaut]

If you use it right, the coffee tastes great. It is different and much stronger than the coffee from an Aeropress though, which has almost no bitterness at all if you use it right. But that's much harder than producing a good cup of coffee in a Moka pot.

Easy solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Put a $2/cup tax on them and Keurig would "suddenly" have a solution that makes them 100% recyclable.

No one fucking cares

[axewolf]

Get this advertisement bullshit outta here

Re:No one fucking cares

[KGIII]

Do you always show up as the new guy and try to tell other people what to do? Do they usually listen or do they laugh at you and then ignore you?

Re:No one fucking cares

[axewolf]

do you know what institutionalization is?

Or you could use a reusable filter

[ZipK]

Or you could use a single cup Melitta and a permanent filter. Or the all-in-one Frieling.

Enviro guilt never ends

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you people ever get tired of the relentless environmental guilt trips about everything?

Re:Enviro guilt never ends

[thinkwaitfast]

Something had to replace religion.

My coffee maker...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is about six feet tall and uses a spoon to put instant coffee in a cup, pour in some hot water and stir. My coffee maker is me.

assholes

[supernova87a]

Let's not be such eager shills for Keurig's attempts to fix up its image, shall we? Their priority isn't doing good for the environment or the customer, it's doing whatever it takes to makes customers think that they're doing good for the environment -- so that they recover their sales revenues after the customer-fucking DRM attempt with Keurig 2.0 that got them tarred and feathered.

Get Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

If Apple can design or contract Liam design and construction, Keureg can do it too.

Headline is missing two important words

[mark-t]

Keurig Spends 10 Years Trying to Develop A Recyclable Coffee Cup

Re:Headline is missing two important words

[plopez]

That's corporate innovation for you...

Nice advert

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep up the slashvertisments whiplosh...

Just love how this site is sinking.

What about the other plastic that nobody care ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not sure why there's so much Keurigs articles recently, what about plastic knife and fork kit for take out foods, straw, plastic cup, alkaline battery all of those could circle the earth quite a few time as well and we do not see 3 article a week on them, at least they are trying to improve...

EditorDavid

[Anonymous Coward]

No friends, no foes, no comments, no submissions...

Is that a record for mediocrity?

Keurig and Tassimo - worst invention of the centur

[snowsnoot]

The coffee tastes like crap, is an environmental nightmare and is far less cost effective than previous methods. Are we really that busy that we don't have 2-3 minutes to brew a shot of espresso and steam some milk?/For fucks sake people COME ON. If you own or regularly use one of these machines, please do us all a favour and off yourself!

What is Keurig? Nesspresso/Dulce Gusto?

[Anonymous Coward]

Until slashdot, I'd never heard of Keurig before... I guess this is some American version of Nespresso crap?

I'm familiar with the brilliant reinvention of coffee that no one asked for except for the Nesle stock holders, Nespresso and Dulce Gusto... Keurig is something similar I guess?!?!?!

Recently travelled to Argentina where Nespresso capsules cost around USD$0.85 per capsule! (Average yearly income is US$13k)... coming from Australia where Nespresso crapsules cost around US$0.50 (Average yearly wage is around US$57300).... okay, so that is a TOTAL rip off... but what really gauled me, was these capsules were ONLY available from "special" Nespresso stores in Argentina, where we unfortunately had to wait for 20 minutes in a e-Queue for a real live human to let us pick up a box and pay for it. I'm sure we paid more because of the queue - because queues indicate "exclusivity"... even better than absurd pricing....

The guys at Nespresso are geniuses, they're making something as simple as grinding beans and pushing hot water through them, into something exclusive and expensive.... well, in Argentina more so than here in Oz, but just wickedly cunning business practice. Some sales exec got a good bonus for dreaming up this con!

Re:What is Keurig? Nesspresso/Dulce Gusto?

[iserlohn]

It's worse than that. At least the nespresso system is a high pressure system for brewing (something vaguely similar to barrista-style) espresso. The Keurig k-cup system just brews low pressure filter coffee.

SF Coffee sells these already...

[Anonymous Coward]

SF Coffee http://www.sanfranciscobaycoffee.com/index.php/d/ makes/sells a compostable non plastic based K-cup that works well and sells for a great price with decent coffee at Costco. The question is why aren't others doing the same.

Make them out of metal?

[blindseer]

The first thing that came to mind is make them out of metal. Metals are infinitely recyclable, unlike paper or plastic. The other requirements seems to be met, rigidity, air tight, and compatible with the foil tops they use now.

I imagine the problem is cost. Common metals for food storage are aluminum, copper/brass, and steel. These metals are expensive. Cheaper metals, like lead, would be a big fail.

I believe the problem is less about finding a material that works but one that works and is as cheap as what they use now.

Inferior coffe

[OpinOnion]

K cups are a huge scam and the coffee isnt as fresh or good as the stuff you get in the bags as food stores and such. Many times it's not even as good standard fresh coffee. There is no way all those little processed cups are going to be as fresh probability wise. They sit around more, they get holes in them, they probably aren't even fully airtight many times. It's a scam because people like gadgets... that simple. Anyone who really has a taste for coffee is unlikely to think those taste better, so it's really just sad scam for the extremely lazy people. You can probably make a whole pot of coffee, drink one cup, and dump the rest out and still have a lower cost of ownership than the K Cups. The only place that system really shines is in a workplace where you want that extra compartmentalization for all kinds of reasons... hygiene being one of them. Convenient.. sure. Cheaper.. hell no. Taste better.. nope. You can grind beans in like 30 seconds and blow away 99% of K Cups hardly even trying. The bags are my Walmart are clearly fresher than most any K Cup I've had also. So... yeah .. it's coffee for lazy rich people who like gadgets.. as we all thought.

Re:Inferior coffe

[KGIII]

What dictionary do you use where they're a scam? Do you even know what the word means or do you just apply it to things you do not like? Reddit is over there.

Re:Re-useable K-Cup inserts work really well

[Ol Olsoc]

Hmmmm. I bought 10 reuseable cups direct from China for $10 and they work well. Not perfectly because the wire mesh is a little too large for my favorite grind so sediment gets through. I could supplement with a paper filter but don't mind sediment 'cause I drink loose leaf tea as well. I kinda like a bit of sediment.

You're just a sedimental sort of person.

Re: Keurig and Tassimo - worst invention of the ce

[snowsnoot]

Citation: http://ethicalnag.org/2013/10/...

I'm a big fan of these...

[m2pc]

San Francisco Bay Organic OneCup

They claim their cups are 99% recyclable and I love how you're not brewing hot coffee through plastic which never tastes good IMHO! Our household buys these in bulk every few months.

The best I've found

[hooliganlite]

http://www.perfectpod.com/coll... Been using these for years. The filter includes a top cover so no grounds or sediment get out. There's a spring in the bottom to compress the grounds so the brew isn't too weak. I've brewed maybe a thousand cups and the plastic holder is still like new. Just all-around good engineering.

You mean

[garphik]

China clay?

Drop in the bucket.

[kamapuaa]

Good for Keurig/Green Mountain. A quick Googling shows the average North American consumes 139 kg/person/year, so this will be a bit of a drop in the bucket. But every bit does help.

For all the people saying Keurig isn't the best coffee out there: well, no shit. It's sold for convenience. You press a button and coffee comes out - coffee that I would call "passable" rather than "bad." Afterwards there's no cleanup. There's a reason that it's popular, and it isn't mass delusion.

Green hypocrisy

[PapayaSF]

So, people who say they "care about the planet" insist on drinking a beverage made from beans grown thousands of miles away, but the real problem is the way they make their beverage, after those beans are shipped thousands of miles to them...?

Re: Green hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

Mass freight is cheap and efficient so I don't know what you're complaining about. Buying local is mostly for freshness anyway (if looking at just practical aspects). Greenhouse growing coffee is less efficient than just importing it.

Re: Green hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoah whoah whoah no one supporting or bashing Greens is allowed to actually evaluate environmental impacts! inb4 nuclear power shills

Re: Green hypocrisy

[PapayaSF]

Mass freight is cheap and efficient so I don't know what you're complaining about.

The last I checked, environmentalists considered ocean freighters to be sources of energy usage and air and ocean pollution.

The "placed end to end" measurement is a dramatic but silly way of measuring plastic cups and metal foil. I suspect the total mass and energy footprint of all K-Cups is pretty trivial, but I can't find a reference to their empty weight.

It's called "mug", ladies and gentleman

[Anonymous Coward]

DUDES! Mind control & reading IS fucking real! :D
That's why You guys get pissed off when I smoke pot! :D :D
And I'll keep smoking because I still wanna do THIS: :D :D :D

I love smiling when people are angry. If that makes me a psychopath, well... Fuck You. I'm not thinking for You for free, graduating boy who uses me as a lab rat and is fucking with my scientific career with your ridiculous pseudo-science taht have no money at all and have to sell crack to pay for your boat gasoline.

Huh. *drops the microphone*

I am really confused

[Anonymous Coward]

I read TFA, and the end result I got was this: It took them 10 years to try polypropylene? I mean it's not some exotic material or something, it's one of the everyday plastics.

Worst Invention Ever

[Anonymous Coward]

* bad for the environment
* poor taste
* expensive a hell
* need to make 3-4 to have a decent amount of coffee, making it extraordinarily expensive and not at all convenient. Who the hell drinks only 6oz at a time?

Re:Worst Invention Ever

[Anonymous Coward]

I would argue cigarettes were the worst invention ever, probably followed by leaded petrol. Then follows a slew of Microsoft products, RealPlayer, Java, the SUV, speed bumps, the first-past-the-post election system, anything pertaining to airport "security", four-way stops and then we get to things like crappy disposable coffee cups.

Expensive machine that makes awful coffee

[vision33r]

Alton Brown's Good Eats had an episode that shows what it takes to brew good coffee and it is not that hard to make a good cup but the Keurig is the wrong way to brew. Any of those reusable K-cups is also big fail on coffee brewing. Good coffee takes time, the brewing process requires the right water temp, filter, and the right grind to extract flavors. There are no shortcuts.

Re:Expensive machine that makes awful coffee

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Because I pour water that is boiling or almost boiling over some beans that I grind in about 20 seconds. I can stir that in the French press, or not. Then I pour that coffee and it is always good and always fast.

Keurigs are nice at a place where you don't even have the time to do that (or lack access to a stove or something), but in terms of time, it is not much faster- especially when you realize you have to actually turn the Keurig on and give it time to heat the water.

Basically, while I agree that Keurigs aren't generally great, I don't feel that good coffee takes a long time to brew.

Re:Expensive machine that makes awful coffee

[vovin]

...
Good coffee takes time ...

Effort.

The time to brew (steep) isn't much. It is also interesting to note that the mineral content of the water makes a huge differences in the end result.
Living in the midwest I have pretty hard water which is great for the coffee flavor and rough on the coffee maker (I need to pass a pot of vinegar through every 3 to 4 weeks to de-scale the machine).

http://optipurewater.com/blog/...

For espresso however you really want to use distilled water to get the best flavor extraction.

Nespresso does exactly that

[xtal]

..little more spendy, but a damn nice cup of espresso.

Re:Nespresso does exactly that

[lindseyp]

But even worse environmentally. Those aluminium pods are theoretically recyclable, but since they're full of spent coffee grounds you can't throw them in with other aluminium trash, so they get chucked in the bin and end up in landfill. It's a massive waste of energy, as Aluminium takes a lot of energy to produce, yet far less to recycle.

Nespresso "commercial" is the perfect solution. Tamped espresso UFO-shaped pods made of a mylar-like material. Not recyclable but not a lot of waste either.

Re:Nespresso does exactly that

[Anonymous Coward]

But even worse environmentally. Those aluminium pods are theoretically recyclable, but since they're full of spent coffee grounds you can't throw them in with other aluminium trash,

Oh how wrong you are. Here in Sweden, Nespresso pays the recyclers to allow you to do exactly this. There's absolutely no need to clean them from the coffee grounds. Seems like the U.S. needs to get into the 21th century when it comes to recycling.

Re:Nespresso does exactly that

[Anonymous Coward]

A link to prove it https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=sv&u=http://www.nespresso.com/ecolaboration/se/se/recycling.html&prev=search

Re:Nespresso does exactly that

[Anonymous Coward]

Aluminium (and other metals) is extracted during/after incineration, before the remainder ends up at a landfill. It is recycled even from the non-seperable remainder waste.

Re:Nespresso does exactly that

[KozmoStevnNaut]

And then you're supporting Nestlé, who famously persuaded the World Water Council to change its statement so as to reduce access to drinking water from a "right" to a "need." Nestlé chairman and former CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe stated that "access to water should not be a public right."

Fuck Nestlé forever.

Re:Nespresso does exactly that

[lindseyp]

That is impressive. I don't think that's the case for most of the world, though. Definitely not where I live.

The problem is

[Anonymous Coward]

that recycling is frowned upon and considered un-American. You are a consumption culture, you consume and throw away, and you feel that there is merit in doing so, and it will not change.

San Francisco Bay coffee pods

[duke_cheetah2003]

...have long since solved this issue with biodegradable pods. Keurig must just be idiots.

http://www.sanfranciscobaycoff...

Re:San Francisco Bay coffee pods

[laffer1]

I don't think it's solved, it's just better than regular k-cups. However, those wouldn't work for some k-cups such as hot cocoa. The powder is too fine.

you could probably get away with most coffee or tea k-cups though.

Already been discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

Except we already have complex bacteria that can digest cellulose. It doesn't follow that evolution would need to go back to square one to digest a different polymer.

And they're already appearing:
http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/blogs/boy-discovers-microbe-that-eats-plastic

Eat shit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently there are billions (trillions?) of flies which think shit to be delicious. Care to give it a try?

C'mon. Give yourself a push. Probably it's all prejudices.

K-Cups?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last year Keurig Green Mountain sold over 9 billion single servings of its coffee in plastic "K-Cups"

That is quite a lot for a company (or product, for that matter) I had never heard of before. Is it a region specific thing?

Home Hipster Barrista

[monkeyxpress]

Seriously, if you want good coffee, just buy the cheapest espresso machine you can (about $100-150 new, half that second hand) and spend 15mins watching some instruction videos. Once you have this all you need to buy is bags of pre-ground beans (or if you what better-than-many-cafe-quality, buy a grinder and roast raw beans on your stove) and you can make a hipster grade latte - including the milk art fern - in a couple of minutes for around 10c.

I have friends who bought expensive pod coffee machines, and their coffee is rubbish. They also have all these weird contraptions to aerate and heat the milk. When I suggest they try using an espresso machine, they always go on about how making coffee with one is really hard because you have to do a professional barrista training course. This is just buying into the whole hipster hype. The hardest thing about being a hipster barrista in a trendy cafe is setting your pompadour in the morning. If you graduated high school I assure you that making espresso coffee is not going to beat you. Pod machines are just the walled garden of the coffee industry.

Re:Home Hipster Barrista

[thegarbz]

I have friends who bought expensive pod coffee machines, and their coffee is rubbish. They also have all these weird contraptions to aerate and heat the milk. When I suggest they try using an espresso machine, they always go on about how making coffee with one is really hard because you have to do a professional barrista training course. This is just buying into the whole hipster hype.

Not at all. Well it depends.

Your $100 espresso machine includes high pressure pump and back pressure regulators in the group head that ensure that there's a consistent draw through the coffee beans regardless of the skill of the operator. And they will get you about 90% of the way there to an excellent espresso with no training required.

However if you go the whole 9 yards and get yourself a really decent espresso machine you get no hand holding. Expect to spend $300 on a very entry level grinder capable of the micro fine adjustment needed to be able to draw a palatable cup (not a good cup, just a palatable one), and expect to throw away about 1/3rd of your coffee as a simple change in humidity can convert your perfect cup to something that will make you wish you had a Keurig piece of shit instead. With a proper espresso machine going to a course is highly recommended and the only reason I put up with such a machine at home is because I actually WAS a barista during my uni years.

Re:Home Hipster Barrista

[Anonymous Coward]

Or buy a fully automatic espresso machine for about €250 and get consistently good coffee at the push of a button, using only roasted coffee beans and water.

Re:Home Hipster Barrista

[swb]

That seems really counter-intuitive. A cheap espresso machine is actually a better machine that produces a more consistent cup than an expensive machine, which also requires expensive accessories like micro fine adjustments?

Whenever I have engaged in the fantasy of an at-home espresso machine and actually wasted the time of the apparently knowledgeable specialty kitchen store employees, it always looked like the more you spent, the more likely you were to get consistently good espresso with less effort. That's always the way the clerks described it.

Although I have a good friend who uses the iconic stovetop espresso maker all the time and it seems pretty good.

Re:Home Hipster Barrista

[tlhIngan]

That seems really counter-intuitive. A cheap espresso machine is actually a better machine that produces a more consistent cup than an expensive machine, which also requires expensive accessories like micro fine adjustments?

Not really. The cheap machine is the home unit that's mostly automated and gets you a good cup of coffee.

The expensive machine has al sorts of adjustments and switches and requires careful tending, but with proper knowledge and skill, can out-do what the automatic machine makes.

The deal is, the former machine sells by the millions, the latter by the hundreds.

It depends what the coffee is for - is it to simply perk you up in the morning, or is it something you want to experience and savor? The former is well served by the automatic machine, and is probably why most people drink coffee. The latter is for the few aficionados who treat it as more than a beverage.

You can compare it to standard mass produced bulk beer versus craft beer. Do you want a beverage to gulp down or do you want to experience it?

Re:Home Hipster Barrista

[swb]

That's really different than the sales pitch by the store.

They always made it sound like the more expensive machines automated much of the process in an optimal way. Maybe it was just a pitch to sell really expensive machines ($500 to several thousand dollars) but my guess also is that *most* people willing to buy a super expensive automated machine want it for the quality and convenience and don't really have any interest in small-scale organic chemistry.

As for my own tastes, I would have been happy with something approximating what you get from a coffee place. FWIW, my tastes are too pedestrian to notice the difference between a place running a full-auto Franke espresso machine and a hipster-ish coffee house with a barista running a manual commercial machine.

I've ultimately given up on the whole idea and decided a $50 coffee maker from Target is good enough for my tastes and if I want an espresso I will just buy it from someplace.

Re:Home Hipster Barrista

[thegarbz]

A cheap espresso machine is actually a better machine that produces a more consistent cup than an expensive machine

And you know what produces the most consistent cup? A damn Keurig. But consistent and good are not the same. There is an art to the perfect cup of coffee, but like all art it is out sourced for convenience. Take the basic premise of a ground coffee for instance. Different beans with different roasting methods need differently fine grinds depending on how moist they are in order to draw the perfect cup. That can change over the course of hours, which is why if you ever get coffee from a place with inconsistent quality, ask the staff if they are allowed to adjust the grind. Chances are they say no their manager does it in which case the only time you'll get a consistently good coffee is after the manager opens the store in the morning. Half of the skill of a barista is simply being able to compact the grinds (tamper) them with a consistent pressure so that you can make a good cup of coffee with a grinder set up by someone else (who also needs to be able to compact with the same pressure.

Keurig, Nespresso, et al get around this by pre-grinding the coffee and then sealing it air tight so the state doesn't change, but since they make money selling coffee they also do their best to cheap out (a Nespresso capsule contains about 1/2 of a standard dose of coffee grinds), and then they charge through the nose for it.

The more expensive the damn things are the more they automate the basic tasks. A $100 espresso machine may draw a good enough coffee but you may still splash milk all over the kitchen if you don't know how to steam your own latte. The expensive machines take care of that too, but again it's a 90% thing. Getting perfect foam requires a perfect mastering of something that is affected by chaos (drawing a precise amount of air in with the steam while creating a vortex in the milk container). It's impossible to automate which is why they simply never create the perfect foam.

So there's some truth to the more expensive ones making better coffee, but there's also an aspect of someone trying to sell you something. Also as someone who used to make a nice side business from repairing broken espresso machines off ebay and selling them back on ebay the fancier they are the less I want them in my kitchen.

Also don't discount the Moka Pot. It's a core part of my camping equipment, as is a stove top steamer for some hipstering while getting in touch with nature :-)

Re:Home Hipster Barrista

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Don't even bother with the espresso machine, all of the affordable home units are mediocre at best. Get a French press, an Aeropress or a Moka pot and learn to use it/them.

You'll thank me later. The Moka Brikka in particular makes better faux-espresso than the espresso produced by most home units.

Re:Home Hipster Barrista

[KozmoStevnNaut]

+1 for the Moka pot, it's an amazing invention that's stood the test of time. I've found the 2-cup model to produce the perfect strength and amount for me. I waffle a bit between whether the original Express is best, or if I prefer the faux-espresso produced by the Brikka. Either way, I like to switch out between those, my Aeropress and my French press. Different methods for different days.

For proper espresso, I go to my local coffee bar, because I can never make an espresso as well as those guys.

Keurig? Never heard of them...

[codeButcher]

First world problems... Must be the first time I heard of Keurig, or that they make anything special in the way of coffee.

What's wrong with a good old plunger pot? Can't imagine much more convenience over boiling some water and pouring it in. My model works well for anything from one to three cups. And the only waste - grounds and some water - should be completely compatible with my compost pile. (Oh, there is the bag the beans come in, which needs disposal after quite a lot of cups of coffee).

On top of that, I should be glad that I live in a country that has some pockets of climate where the odd coffee plantation can thrive, some of which produce quite decent coffee. Still, most coffee beans available is still shipped thousands of kilometers (megameters?) from other countries, in stead of a few hundreds of kilometers for the "locally" produced stuff.

Not that I'm a big coffee drinker. My plunger I use for herbal teas, which get cut off from a plant right by my front door, straight before being brewed. The pot works equally well for that.

OK, enough of this "greener than thou" nonsense and back to work...

Re:Keurig? Never heard of them...

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Keurig makes fancy machines that produce a hot brown vaguely coffee-like liquid. Its main selling point is ease of use.

I cannot understand why people insist on using these worthless capsule machines (including "Nespresso" and "Senseo" and whatever the hell they're called), when there are so many other far superior options for making proper coffee. If you're too lazy to use a Moka pot, a French press or an Aeropress, you really shouldn't be walking upright.

Re:Keurig? Never heard of them...

[The-Ixian]

In theory having a closed loop system can provide a superior cup of coffee by removing all of the variables (grind, temperature, quantity, time, etc).

So you get the same cup of coffee every time. Therefor, you find a kcup/brand/type that you like and you know it will taste the same every time.

I have a single serve Keurig, I like it for the reasons above and I don't want to make a full pot every time I just want a single cup of coffee... which is maybe once a week or even less.

Re:Keurig? Never heard of them...

[KozmoStevnNaut]

That's why you get a small Moka pot, a 1 or 2 cup* model. Makes a perfect amount for one coffee lover (or just enough for two to share).

I have never had a cup of coffee from a single-serving coffee maker that was anywhere near the quality of even a mediocre Moka pot or Aeropress cup of coffee. The fancy all-singing, all-dancing bean-grinding coffee dispenser at work produces a decent cup of coffee, certainly better than the drip coffee many of my colleagues prefer, but it's a great big hulking beast. And it's still inferior to a properly brewed cup o' joe.

Should I hazard a guess, I think freshly-ground beans make the biggest difference.

* Italian cups, so around 1.7 fl. oz. each.

Worthless ideal, even inventor is sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

I read recently even the inventor of the K Cup is sorry he ever designed it. This has to be one of the best examples of a society gone so obsessed with perfection they cannot accept brewing a pot of coffee in a degradable filter or a reusable metal basket. Yet probably many of these same people claim they are so "green" in otherways. But it goes along with the people who buy bottled water in plastic bottles too.

Re:Worthless ideal, even inventor is sorry

[stealth_finger]

Why not just change the material it's made from? Why is it not that simple?

Japan Oxygen

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a stainless steel mug from the 80's made by Japan Oxygen which was reputedly manufactured in a vacuum chamber. The plastic cover and plastic base are long gone, but I have used the pint mug every day for almost 30 years. It keeps my morning french-press coffee as scalding hot for hours as it did on day one. I'd call this recycled as hell.

10 years?!

[Bruinwar]

Dang I would hate to be on that development team. Job security I guess. Now they will likely be working on a version that can be tossed into the compost pile. Why not make it edible? A nice snack to go with your coffee?

Re:10 years?!

[stealth_finger]

Dang I would hate to be on that development team. Job security I guess. Now they will likely be working on a version that can be tossed into the compost pile. Why not make it edible? A nice snack to go with your coffee?

Why not just make the cups out of coffee?

Re:10 years?!

[Bruinwar]

Coffee with cocoa. 70%! Organic! Mountain Grown! FAIR TRADE! Freefuckingrange!

Hire Apple's CEO Timmy Cook

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea that will really be a laugh.

Timmy will start twerking and smacking his lips as he waltzes down the street singing "Do wa did e did e dumb did e do."

Ha ha

Because people are too lazy to use a French press?

[jcphil]

I still can't figure out the problem a Keurig machine is supposed to solve, but it damned sure creates one. You can buy pre-ground coffee, throw it into your French press and have good coffee in minutes without creating mountains of trash. And it will be great tasting coffee too. I see two problems: laziness and the appeal of brand new "gee whiz" technology that looks slicker and costs more without offering any real benefit. And it makes crappier coffee too.

duh

[sociocapitalist]

"Keurig Spends 10 Years Developing A Recyclable Coffee Cup"

The duration indicating that this was a low to no priority project for the company.

Re:duh

[cmdr_klarg]

Probably had to burn through the stocks of existing cups.

Seems like an easy fix

[stealth_finger]

Just make cups the exact same shape and size out of a better material? Why can they not do that?

Recyclable coffee cups are not the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Dogs are. Dogs are a problem. Dogs bark, bite and urinate everywhere. Dogs are messy. That's why I stomp on dogs. I stomp them flat. When I see a dog, I stomp on it. Chihuaua or Rottweiler, Basset Hound or Great Dane, Yorkshire Terrier or St Bernard, I stomp them all. Stomp stomp stomp.

Already have reusable pods....

[Anonymous Coward]

I spent $10.00 on a set of four "refillable" k-cups for my Keurig. Even came with a little scoop that scoops just the right amount of coffee..

Re:Already have reusable pods....

[nedlohs]

surely that defeats the entire purpose of using k-cups in the first place.

Thoughts...

[PortHaven]

1. I've long thought that making them from something like coconut husk would make a great alternative. Then you just plop a blueberry seed thru the hole, and shove it in the ground. Next thing you know....you've got a plant growing.

2. I always laugh about the talk of waste. You see, Keurig cups did NOT create more waste. Keurig cups largely replaced purchased coffee like Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts. If you look at a Starbucks coffee. (see provided link: https://cdn4.iconfinder.com/da...) you will notice the lid if made out of plastic similar to the Keurig. You will also notice that it is about the equivalent amount of plastic. On top of that, you have the whole paper/plastic cup itself. So what Keurig did, was essentially eliminate ALL those cups from the landfills.

But most people are not smart enough to comprehend this.

Never Happy

[jellomizer]

"But the company may still face criticism because their new cups can be recycled -- but not composted."

Often I find that the environmental types (not the scientists who are environmentalists) are often pressure companies so much that they will end up doing nothing. When a company tries to do the right thing, they should be rewarded for it, not shunned because they couldn't go all the way. The key problem is there are tradeoffs that happen, and will the consumers be willing to take those tradeoffs. A compostable k-cup may not keep freshness.

Whiners hate the future....

[Lumpy]

There are a million ways to make it all better and many non authorized kcup sellers already do this.

And those that bitch and moan... it's the fucking closest we have right now to a star trek system to make coffee. I pick what I want put in the pod and go. Granted I have a commercial one at home plumbed into the water and it turns on and off with a timer so it's ready at 6am for me and turns off at 9am to save power.

Granted it's not the beard wearing trendly where you hand grind the organic cat poop beans in a hand crafted way and then steep in glacier water before I use the aeropress into a free trade ceramic mug.... but then I'm half the way to work before the hipsters even get their coffee read to go.

Re:Whiners hate the future....

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Why are you in such a hurry?

Re:Whiners hate the future....

[Lumpy]

Because the boss gets all cranky when I roll in at 10am because it took 2 hours to make my morning coffee.

Re:Whiners hate the future....

[KozmoStevnNaut]

2 hours?!

My Moka pot takes 5-6 minutes, the French press is even faster.

You have summoned a Green

[Anonymous Coward]

insist on drinking a beverage made from beans grown thousands of miles away

As others in the thread have pointed out, this is greenwashing.

Most Greens don't insist on this and would probably be OK with (or even prefer) locally-sourced beans too. Every other group that isn't 100% homogeneous and post-human is "hypocritical" when viewed this way. You'll find Republicans against Big Government who support domestic spying and the TSA, and Democrats for The People who support sales taxes and drug prohibition.

10 Years?

[Stonent1]

How long has the tea bag been on the market? Other than the little staple holding it together, there's nothing about it that can't be composted. Oh I see, they can't figure out a way to lock you in with a simple tea bag. That's why I use an espresso maker to make my single cups.

Convenience.

[tinkerton]

That's the tradeoff. They're trying to improve the tradeoff a bit but really, it's still wasteful. At least the plastic is collected unlike horrible things like artificial grass, or that little hype with the billions of elastic loom bands, that pump huge amounts of little plastic pieces into the environment. Someone should make a listing of those.

Re:Convenience.

[rwven]

They should have made all the cups 100% biodegradable/compostable from the moment they realized how popular they were becoming. Recycling is fine and good but the vast majority of people aren't going to recycle these cups... The least they could do is make it so they're not a long term drain on the environment.

Re:Meanwhile (a tip for you)

[gosand]

I've had my gold reusable filter for 10+ years now... and I found that there was always some fine silt in the last cup. So now I use a paper filter with my gold filter, and the silt is gone. The coffee is much better. I suppose I don't really need the gold filter anymore, but I have it. and it has a handle so I can carry the whole thing over to the trash can. (all it takes is dropping a filter full of wet coffee grounds on the floor once to know what a PITA that is)

Re:Reuseable K-Cup insert - Check your O Ring

[karlandtanya]

Had the same problem--the thing leaked like a sieve.
OK, I know it's supposed to do that as it *is* a sieve...but it leaked clear water everywhere, not coffee out the bottom.

Turns out there's supposed to be an O-Ring in a groove in the lid. Bought a 6-pack of new ones from aliexpress or amazon (forget which); they all had the rings intact. Now all the coffee goes in the coffee cup.

Here's a picture you can see where the ring goes.
(This isn't the one we use and I have no idea if this one is worth a darn. But it's orange & you can see the black O-ring easily in the pic)

http://www.aliexpress.com/item...

Let's not forget the unfixable machines

[EmagGeek]

https://ifixit.org/blog/7668/u...

Apparently if a machine breaks it just goes to a landfill instead of being repaired - because they cannot be repaired.

Re:Meanwhile (a tip for you)

[Camel Pilot]

Paper filters does filter out the fines and results IMHO a better cup of coffee..

Also the paper filters adsorbs a libid that prevents a slight cholesterol bump from drinking coffee.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

"We propose that paper filters of the type used for drip-filtered coffee retain the lipid present in boiled coffee and in that way remove the hypercholesterolemic factor"

Re:Because people are too lazy to use a French pre

[LunaticTippy]

I've seen people who seem stumped by a spent french press. They waste gallons of water and a generous handful of paper towels, put such a river of grounds down the sink it gums up the works, and it takes them 5 minutes to deal so badly with things. I suspect it is far kinder to the environment for them to toss a K cup, at least in the deserts of California.

I'm guessing people who are generally bad at things love these because a dim child could operate one successfully with no surprises.

FWIW, I rent a room on airbnb and let guests make coffee. I wouldn't dream of putting a french press there. I have a drip pot with pre measured bags of ground beans.

May I suggest...

[Anonymous Coward]

McDonald's coffee is surprisingly good and doesn't cause a fantastic increase in the circumference of your ass like everything else on their menu. Also McDonalds coffee cups stacked end to end will fit inside each other (Much like humans!) and thus only go around the world twice leaving you with a clean conscious a happy wallet and a great ass.