Landfills and The K-Cup A Disaster in The Making

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Landfills and The K-Cup A Disaster in The Making
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• So lets see if I got this right. In the far
  distant past if one wanted to have a fresh brewed
  cup of coffee he would go to the pantry, pull out
  a bag of ground coffee and measure out the
  correct amount of grounds for the number of cups
  he wants. Put a filter into the basket and into
  that pours his grounds. Then measures and pours
  the correct amount of water into his coffee maker
  and turns it on. 10 min later he gets his coffee.

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• Now all of this takes maybe 5 minutes, 10 if
  youre slow like me. While the coffee is brewing
  you do other things to get ready for work or
  whatever it is you do in the morning. I dont see
  this as a huge hassle and besides that wonderful
  coffee smell is half the experience. Well it
  seems a guy by the name of John Sylvan who
  invented the K-cup back in 1992 thought this
  routine was just too tedious.

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• His goal was to create a better, more
  customizable and liberating caffeine experience
  than the tepid office percolator. I still dont
  understand what that means but that was his
  reason for inventing the K-cup. Like the old
  saying goes, seemed like a good idea at the time.
  Fast forward to 2016 and we find ourselves under
  a virtual mountain of these damn cups. Come to
  find out there not even biodegradable, now thats
  just plain irresponsible in this day and age,
  even back in 2006 when these things really took
  off it was extremely short sighted on the part of
  the manufacture.

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• But their popularity has created an even bigger
  problem a mountain of used, non-recyclable
  plastic cups ending up in landfills. According to
  Halifax, Nova Scotia-based filmmaker Mike Hachey,
  who has made K-Cups the target of his crusade,
  there could be as many as 60 billion of them in
  landfills.  Hachey started a website Kill the K
  Cup to track the activities of Keurig Green
  Mountain and, to raise awareness, hes made an
  over-the-top horror video in which a monster made
  of K-Cups attacks helpless young urbanites.

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• Kill the K-Cup before it kills our planet, the
  film proclaims.   EcoWatch.com, Kill the K-cup
  Before It Kills Our Planet Now heres the dig,
  other companies do make biodegradable compostable
  pods, but the Keurig 2.0 has a digital rights
  management system that rejects pods made by rival
  companies.

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• This sounds eerily like the aftermarket ink and
  toner industry which Im a part of. They
  installed a similar system in their printers that
  can detect if the cartridge is a aftermarket thus
  rendering it unusable. This takes away a choice
  that the consumer has a right to, mainly once
  they buy a piece of equipment they should have
  the right to use any aftermarket product they
  want.

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• But that story is for another article. The point
  is the Keurig K-cup is currently only about 5
  percent recyclable the rest is made from No. 7
  plastic which cant be recycled. As of 2013 it
  was reported that Keurig Green Mountain Coffee
  produced enough coffee pods to wrap around the
  equator 10.5 times.

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• Keurig did say they are working on the problem
  and are committed to fixing it by 2020 which as
  of 2015 gives them time to produce enough cups to
  circle the Earth 52 more times. Does it really
  take that much time to solve this man made
  disaster?

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• I just cant for the life me understand how a
  business in good conscience can willing produce a
  product that cant be recycled, and then admits
  there is a problem but it will take them at least
  5 years to fix it. Looks to me like profit trumps
  common sense again. I must admit though in their
  defense at the time of this writhing they are
  really trying to solve this problem. If you visit
  their web site  it states that they are now using
  a plastic called 5 Polypropylene plastic which
  is much more recyclable than the old material
  they were using.

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• The best solution at this point is to ensure what
  you are buying is made from the new 5
  Polypropylene material, if its not dont buy it.
  This will send a message to Keurig that the
  consumer insist on bio gradable products.

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• Make sure that your communitys waste recycling
  center can process this type of plastic.  If
  after looking into this new material you are
  still not comfortable with using these K-cups how
  about just going back to making coffee using a
  good old drip coffee maker!

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