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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.
Funny, because every time I get coffee from one of those little cups it taste like it's already been composted.
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.
OOOH! Instant coffee slam! BURRRRN!
These k-cup compatible pods are ~90% biodegradable. Keurig should license their design post haste.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
Bialetti Moka Express:
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.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
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.
Or you could use a single cup Melitta and a permanent filter. Or the all-in-one Frieling.
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?
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Keurig Spends 10 Years Trying to Develop A Recyclable Coffee Cup
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
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.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Citation: http://ethicalnag.org/2013/10/...
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.
Something had to replace religion.
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.
China clay?
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.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
You can play AAA games on a FreeBSD-based operating system, be it OS X or PlayStation 4.
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...?
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
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....
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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.
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.
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.
..little more spendy, but a damn nice cup of espresso.
..don't panic
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.
Better with re-usable pods instead.
Fill your own coffee in them.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
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.
...have long since solved this issue with biodegradable pods. Keurig must just be idiots.
http://www.sanfranciscobaycoff...
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.
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.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
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.
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...
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
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.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
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?
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
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.
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.
"Keurig Spends 10 Years Developing A Recyclable Coffee Cup"
The duration indicating that this was a low to no priority project for the company.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Just make cups the exact same shape and size out of a better material? Why can they not do that?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Why not just change the material it's made from? Why is it not that simple?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
If I had mod points I'd mod this interesting. I didn't know any of that. I'll have to do some research.
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.
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.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
"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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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).
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
surely that defeats the entire purpose of using k-cups in the first place.
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.
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?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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?
do you know what institutionalization is?
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.
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.
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)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
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...
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
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.
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"
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.
Man, you really need that seminar!
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?
Eat the rich.
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.
Eat the rich.
:) 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? :)
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.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.
Eat the rich.
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? :)
Yeah, it's called a spouse or children ;-)
Eat the rich.
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