Greening Up Our K-Cups
Posted by Doug on 20 Jun 2008 at 12:07 pm | Tagged as: Social Responsibility
“When will you be able to offer a more sustainable K-Cup?”
We hear this question a lot — from our customers, sure, but also from people throughout our own organization. It’s a simple question, but the answers are pretty complex.
Consider for a moment that sustainability means different things to different people. For some it’s being carbon-neutral, for others it means being recyclable or made strictly with renewable materials, or a product that’s compostable, biodegradable or petroleum-free. That’s not an attempt to muddy the waters, but to try to lay out some of the many fronts we’re actively researching in order to make K-Cups, and single-cup brewing in general, every bit as ecological as it is convenient. 
- We *are* researching alternatives to the materials that currently make up our K-Cups. There’s not a lot we can publicly talk about just yet, save to say this is an active effort for us, and an important one.
- We’re conducting Life-Cycle Analysis to better understand the entire ecological footprint of the K-Cup. That’s more than just its packaging… it’s an attempt to evaluate the *entire* footprint — and to look at both the product’s positive and negative attributes.
While our research continues, we continue to take active steps. We’re introducing more Fair Trade Certified® coffees into our K-Cup product line. We’re promoting the “My K-Cup” reusable single-serve filter, which is compatible with all of the home brewers we offer today. And we recently added recycling codes to those parts of our home brewers that are recyclable.
We intend to continue to improve the ecological impact of our K-Cups until we’re all of us satisfied — customers and employees alike — that our K-Cups are a winning proposition not only for coffee lovers the world over, but for the world, too.
I think the Kcups are fine the way they are. Changing them may change the coffee flavor and that would be a disaster!
Leave them the way they are.
Not to worry!
Any changes in favor of sustainability will have to pass an exam by our extremely fussy coffee tasters. (Take it from me… I’m one of those fussy tasters!) We demand quality in our cup, and we won’t settle for anything less… we know you wouldn’t, either.
I completely believe in what Green Mountain is doing! If ALL of us don’t make the necessary changes in our lifestyles to reduce our own carbon footprints, then our Earth’s future will be very bleak.
It’s not that hard to be conscious of your actions, and it makes such a huge difference when you do!
Thank you Doug for shedding some light on this and encouraging this conversation. As with any “packaged good” the packaging is a challenge environmentally. On a macro-level, it seems like the entire packaged-goods industry needs to find a better way to delivery quality to people. We need to find ways to turn our waste-stream into valuable products/materials vs filling up land-fills. Green Mountain is probably one of the a few companies seriously working to figure this out, which is why I’m so proud to work here.
In the meantime, there are important things that all of us can do in our personal lives to reduce our ecological “footprint” and be more efficient in our energy/food/transportation needs. Every little step helps. That’s why I’ve been volunteering for http://www.carbonshredders.org to help people use the online “carbon diet” program that helps people measure and reduce their energy-use and Carbon footprint. Since we did the “Low Carbon Diet” in our home, (about a year ago) we are saving over $2000 per year on power/heating/gas bills and reduced our carbon footprint from 35,000 pounds to 10,000 pounds. The online “Do Your Part” tool walks you through simple things you can do to be more efficient and shows you how much C02 and $ you’ll save for each step. Lots of little things like flourescent lightbulbs and power strips DO add up to big improvements that will save everyone $. I highly recommend the diet!
GB
Just after firing off my comment on the social responsibility of your K-cups, I moved to the next topic – your efforts at resolving the sustainability problems of the cups!
Mea culpa for not reading further and thank you for keeping the total environment in mind.
BMK
Thanks, Barbara!
And not to worry… I have trouble keeping up with the latest posts, too!
I think that you should look into a corn based plastic that is now available for use in bottled water and do the same for the K-cups. They are biodegradeable in the landfill and there is the reduction of offgasing from the degredation from the regular plastics.
[...] this coffee means serious consumption; the brewing system and the plastic, K-Cups. A company blog post responds basically by saying: It’s complicated. We’re working on [...]
Although the K-cups are not biodegradable, by using them and a reuseable mug at home, instead of buying a cup of coffee in a much larger plastic cup at a coffee shop each day, it does save a bit on what’s being put into our garbage everyday.
Thanks for this article. I’m in love with my Keurig and the only thing that has been bothering me about it has been the collection of little plastic k-cups leftover.
I found a great use for the left over k-cups. I empty the used coffee grounds and use them as little pots for my small african violets. Perfect size and better than buying small plastic pots.
Tesmango makes a great point. There are many days when I find myself buying coffee while I am out and about rather than taking the time to make a cup at home. I just do not like having to fill the individual filter and clean it up every time I want a cup (not that it is hard or anything-just more time consuming than ordering through a drive thru). I do not always want the same ol’ coffee that we have at home either. If I would look at it as using less waste than one of the to-go cups, it puts it more in perspective. I do look forward to the recyclable/biodegradable K-cups of the future though. That would really help with the guilt of not being able to be “green” while enjoying my coffee.
It’s been a while since the last post on this topic. I REALLY hope that Green Mountain Coffee finds an alternative container for the K-Cups. I think they would be a hot seller, especially if you’re the first to offer it. I usually enjoy at least 2 cups of coffee a day from my brewer and I use a reusable coffee cup. However, drinking 2 k-Cups a day for 365 days a year (that’s pretty realistic for me, as I am addicted to your coffee), that’s about 700 K-Cups in the landfill per year just from me! I applaud you for your efforts! Keep us posted!!
Has there been any progress on this? My company is seriously considering K-cups, but the recycling issue has been brought up a few times. Please advise.
I was just given a K-cup maker, and love the convenience! But I was saddened to see no recycle code on the cups. I’m considering returning the maker, because, though small, I’m concerned about the waste I’ll be generating over the course of the maker’s lifetime. I have a refillable pot, too, but that sort of defeats the convenience factor.
GMC…hope you can fix this soon!
Thanks.
Thanks for your efforts and I look forward to being able to purchase “green” k-cups in the future. Until then I have made the conscious choice to use the reuasble k-cup filter with green mountain coffee. Takes more time but makes me feel better knowing I am not filling lanfills with k-cups. I know it is a small thing, but important to me. When you come up with an eco-friendly cup I will buy in bulk!!
Thanks for all you do!
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