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

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.

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.

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

[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.

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

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.

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: 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?!