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If you make a quick cup of coffee every morning in a Keurig or another instant brewer, then you probably go through a lot of plastic coffee pods. And those capsules are non-recyclable, so they pile up in your trash can—and the landfill thereafter. This wasteful process is why they've come under fire recently among critics, environmentalists, and even politicians. Yet the pre-portioned pods continue to sell nonetheless. To cut out what they see as completely unnecessary waste, some cities are getting rid of k-cups entirely.
In Hamburg, Germany, coffee pods have been banned from state-run buildings as part of a new environmental movement. According to the BBC, German lawmakers called the containers "polluting products" and say they "cause unnecessary resource consumption and waste generation, and often contain polluting aluminum." This move makes sense for the European country, where one in eight coffees (12.5 percent) come from a pod.
It's an eerily close comparison to the U.S., where 13 percent of people drink coffee made from a single-cup brewer every day. But the kicker comes in the American market: K-cups and their competitors' pods account for more than a quarter of ground coffee sales.
But it's not just the Keurig at fault here. Coffee companies and small-appliance makers like Lavica, Mr. Coffee, Cuisinart, Bunn, and Hamilton Beach all use, if not also produce, non-recyclable canisters for coffee grounds. Nespresso, which was the first to sell single-cup coffee makers in 1986, churned out pods without readily available recycling options in the U.S. until 2012—though recycling initiatives began back in 1991 in Switzerland.
Because of their growing popularity (single-serve machines surpassed drip-coffee maker sales in 2013) the pods' environmental impact is of great concern. Add this to the fact that a whopping 2 billion cups of coffee are drunk around the world every single day and the looming repercussions are even more startling.
Quartz reports that even the creator of the K-cup has stopped using them out of guilt, saying that he "feels bad" about their wasteful impact. Of course, the company doesn't emphasize exactly how many pods it sells each year, but has estimated that it could be enough to circle the earth 12 times. Recognizing the potential consequences of this statistic, Keurig has since promised to make all of its single-serving cups recyclable by 2020. But that still hasn't stopped city lawmakers from cutting the cord completely.
UPDATE: February 25, 2016 at 1:38 p.m.
At the end of last year, Nespresso representatives note, the brand reached a collection capacity of over 80 percent in 39 countries but pledge to reach 100percent by 2020. A spokesperson also noted that Nespresso's Original Line and Vertuo Line of coffee capsules are made of aluminum due to its ability to "maintain the high-quality taste and aromas of our Grands Crus" but also because and it is infinitely recyclable. This means that the recycled metal can be used to manufacture new aluminum products every time it's recycled.
In the U.S., Nespresso users have three recycling options, including collection bins at boutiques, drop-off locations at partner retailers like Sur La Table and Williams-Sonoma, and pre-paid shipping through UPS under the coffee company's Mail Back Program.
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