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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.
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.