How Should the Next K-Cup Be?
Posted by Mike on 13 Oct 2008 at 3:40 pm | Tagged as: Coffee & K-Cup Portion Packs
Hi all -
A few weeks back, Ken posted on this blog, asking readers to submit ideas on what the next K-Cup should be. That post has been far and away our most popular, with over 600 comments to date and some very interesting and original suggestions.
A few days ago, however, a reader named Roger posted a different kind of comment. Roger wanted to know why we aren’t using compostable K-Cups. He mentioned that Ben & Jerry’s is currently using compostable containers for their pints so why aren’t we doing the same with our K-Cups?
Great question, Roger, and thanks for posing it.
The answer is in the technical details relating to how the Keurig system delivers such great coffee. When you roast and package coffee, elements like oxygen, moisture, and light are enemies of freshness – when the coffee is exposed to any of them, it will decrease the quality and shelf life of the product. Additionally, when you use your package as a brewing vessel, the package needs to withstand a fairly high amount of heat. As a result, the package itself (the K-Cup) has to be impervious to the exact elements that are at work (heat, moisture, air, light) when you compost waste effectively. Without this packaging, all the resources and effort put into growing and roasting great coffee would be wasted – and that would also be a serious environmental impact.
That still leaves us with the question of what we are doing to work on the issue of the environmental impact of the K-Cup though. Packaging is an area of major environmental concern for all consumer product companies. As the single-cup coffee market and our Keurig brewing systems grow in popularity, we understand that the impact of the K-Cup® waste stream is one of our most significant environmental challenges.
Finding a more environmentally-friendly approach to this packaging challenge is a big priority for us. We are working on a few different fronts to improve the environmental characteristics of the K-Cup system, as well as to mitigate its impact.
Here’s what we’re doing:
First, we are working to identify the right end goal for the K-Cup. The term “environmentally-friendly” or “sustainable” means different things to different people; it could mean carbon-neutral, made with renewable materials only, recyclable, biodegradable, compostable, petroleum-free, etc. We are researching all these avenues, trying to understand what is possible today and tomorrow, taking into account the current state of packaging technology, consumer preferences, community infrastructure, performance requirements, and the demands of the marketplace.
Second, we have commissioned Life-Cycle Analysis to help us quantitatively understand the environmental impact of the K-Cup. Waste at the end of a process is an important factor in understanding the environmental impact of a product, but impact occurs throughout a product’s life. We want to understand the full impact of K-Cup packaging so we can more clearly understand its real benefits as well as where we can take concrete steps to reduce its impact.
Third, we are continuing to invest in both public and private innovation in packaging. We are looking at ways to improve all of our coffee packaging, while still maintaining the freshness and quality that consumers have come to expect from us. We have made some strides in this area. Our hot and cold beverage cups are made from fully renewable materials. And our new 10 and 12 ounce bags of coffee are made from 19% PLA – a bio-plastic sourced from corn.
Fourth, we are introducing more Fair Trade Certified® coffees into our K-Cup line. We believe that’s good for Fair Trade as well as for our business. Its good for Fair Trade because the K-Cup market is growing quickly; having Fair Trade Certified® coffees in K-Cups helps grow the Fair Trade system and exposes more people to great Fair Trade Certified® coffees. Its good for our business because we know consumers like Fair Trade Certified® coffees when they get a chance to learn what it means and taste it.
Fifth, we offer the My K-Cup product, a reusable filter assembly that can be refilled by the consumer, is easily cleaned, and is compatible with all Keurig home brewers sold today.
I hope that helps explain how we’re working to answer the question “How should the next K-Cup be?” – we look forward to sharing our results with you as soon as we can.
5/3/2011 UPDATE:
We appreciate the comments and feedback related to the environmental impact of the Keurig® Single-Cup Brewing System. Since the posting of this blog, we created a webpage on our Brewing a Better World website that has the most recent information on our work to reduce the environmental impact of the K-Cup® portion packs.
Please visit that webpage for the most up to date information on these efforts.
A few highlights from that work include:
-Commissioning a Life-Cycle Analysis that compared single-cup brewing using the Keurig system to drip brewing across a number of environmental dimensions. This analysis indicated that the disposal of a product’s packaging generally represents a fraction of its total environmental impact and that the most significant environmental impact actually occurs in the production of the materials used to create the product. We are acting on this information.
-Investing significant resources in working with packaging suppliers to identify and implement materials changes that will meet our standards for quality and deliver the most significant positive environmental impact, both in the creation and disposal of our packaging.
-Evolving our product design processes and systems by, among other things, educating our engineering staff about sustainable design and establishing in-house Life-Cycle Analysis capability so that we can build greater environmental responsibility into our products and their packaging from the beginning.
To help a little, you can use a can opener or knife to open the K-Cups and dump the used coffee grounds or tea into your compost heap.
You should have a sugar-free K-cup. There are many diabetics and people who battle with weight control who love hot chocolate.
Roger is right! We want a compostable k-cup made out of 100% natural materials.
The K-cup is an environmental abomination. K-Cups are slowly filling our landfills with plastic that is poisoning our world.
Great tasting coffee is not a good enough reason to trash the environment. Please get innovative and figure it out, it must be possible to offer great tasting coffee without abusing and degrading the environment.
The k-cup, as-is, is totally ecologically irresponsible.
Hi Jen and Roger –
Thanks for your comments. Very much appreciate your passion and willingness to speak up.
A compostable K-Cup is just not possible right now. Yes, there are bio-plastics out there, but there are none yet that can (A) provide the right barrier properties (oxygen and moisture) to protect the coffee inside and (B) withstand the high heat that the brewing process requires.
We are in pretty regular contact with industry experts on this topic – if and when we find a compostable material that will protect the coffee appropriately, stand up to the brewing process, and continue to deliver a top quality product to our consumers at the right price, we will be as excited to bring it to market as you will be to see it on the market.
In the meantime, we continue fund research and explore other options that can help us improve the environmental profile of the K-Cup.
Best,
Michael Dupee
Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc.
Why not use polylactic acid corn plastic? I really think where there is a will there is a way. You all would make a killing if you patterned a biodegradable K-cup. I feel this post is totally betting around the bush to cover yourselves. Please say you cringe just the same as we do every time you through your k-cup away? Unless you are like some of us that try to rip it apart, get out the compostable part, then notice there is no recycle # on the bottom of the cup? If any one can do it you all can. I would hurry, you know others are working on it! :)
Hi Lindy –
Thanks for your note.
We already use PLA in our hot anc cold to-go cups and in the bags for our pre-packaged coffee. PLA will not YET provide the necessary functional protection necessary in the K-Cups – perhaps the technology will get there soon but its not there yet.
Thanks,
Mike
Please address the reason why K-Cups are not made with recyclable plastic. I would expect that to be quite an easy fix.
Also, when you read between the lines of your blog post, there is absolutely no concrete, specific action you mention being taken to make the k-cups (emphasis on CUP) more environmentally friendly.
You have “commissioned life-cycle analysis” and are “looking at ways to improve all of (y)our coffee packaging”. Awesome! This article was written more than 6 months ago. What results have your commission yielded? And if you were looking for improvements, have you found anything yet? It all seems just a bit too nebulous.
Hi Michael -
Thanks for your question.
Two pieces of progress to report.
One – our research on alternate materials has shown some success. We hope to be testing a new package this summer, market-testing it this fall/winter, and in market fully with the new package in calendar 2010.
Two – not sure how familiar you are with life-cycle analysis (LCA), but it is exceptionally complicated; its very difficult to draw “lines” around living systems and derive concrete reliable conclusions. Recently, the folks we are working with on the LCA shared a a “first draft” of the model they’ve built. As with anything like this, there were questions. In this case, there were data gaps (more information we need to get them) and model questions (their model didn’t appear to be accurately representing the reality of our packaging process, for example). We are working with them now to fill in the data gaps. Once we’ve done that, we’re going to spend some time with them getting “into the weeds” on the model they’ve built and adjusting to represent our actual processes as accurately as we can. Because the LCA process is so complicated, it is difficult to project exactly when we’ll be done with this work – we are hopeful it will be in good shape by the end of calendar 2009, but we can’t guarantee that yet.
We are hoping the LCA results will enable us to do two things. Leveraging the end product of the LCA (a solid science-based quantitative assessment of the environmental impact of our packaging, based on current state of the art LCA process, data, and technology), we hope to be able to (A) communicate with all our stakeholders more specifically about the actual environmental impact of our products and (B) focus our ongoing long-term packaging R&D efforts on the impacts/issues where we have the most leverage.
Best,
Mike
Why not use PP in 7 layer structure. It will recyle the rest sheet. and It has excellent sealing capacity with foil lid.
Another vote for a compostable K-cup.
I’m relatively brand agnostic for my k-cups. However, I would purchase compostable K-cups to the exclusion of others if they were available.
If other consumers make this pledge, we will provide Green Mountain with justification to continue/accelerate their work in this area.
Cordially,
Michael
As the keurig machine has a re-usable K-cup for using your own grounds, why not just package the coffee in a biodegradable bag (like a tea-bag) and just use the re-usable k-cup. It would make for easier clean up. You can package multiple bags in a biodegradable container which you would think would stay fresh at least as long as a package of ground coffee. I would certainly buy these. :)
Sugar free hot chocolate in a K cup is a necessity for diabetics and provides a healthy choice for non-diabetics. Instead of diet coke, it’s diet hot chocolate. There should be some marketing possibilities with this.
Michael Dupee — it seems incredibly ridiculous to have the position of Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility, when your product is the epitomy of environmental wastefulness and consumer excess. I get fantastically delicious fresh coffee without piling up piles of plastic waste. Wonder how many K-cups are in the horrifying ocean plastic waste dumps?
I actually like the K-cup model for environmental reasons, as it prevents the brewing of too much coffee that needs to be kept warm all day (and often all night), then thrown away because it isn’t fresh. People brew only what they really will drink. It would be great if the machines had a motion-activated shut down sensor so that it wouldn’t keep a reservoir of water heating when nobody is around.
With regard to disposal of the used K-cups, we need to find a way to retrieve the wet coffee grounds. Two reasons: first, it’s a shame to discard such a useful resource that adds greatly to the friability and fertility of soil. Second, landfilled coffee grounds are going to perk up a lot of methane. Even landfills with modern methane recovery systems get only half of it. The rest vents up into the atmosphere, where it is a greenhouse gas 20 times worse than CO2.
I have a suggestion based on Karen’s recommendation above (which I also do). To encourage people to dump out the grounds for composting, could there be a little flyer stuck inside the used K-cup storage bin that shows how to do this? Some people swear it’s safe to dump used grounds directly onto flower and vegetable beds. If Green Mountain could check this out and publicize it, that would make a good interim measure in my opinion.
Eventually I agree that the whole K-cup, with grounds inside, needs to be compostable.
Any tips for making better coffee with the my kcup product? So far the coffee made with ours has been “kind of weak”. My wife and I prefer Dark Magic, so the My KCup is not cutting it.
Dear Chuck: if you want a really strong cup of coffee, I recommend trying our Travel Mug K-Cups, but setting your brewer at the medium or even small serving size. The Travel Mug K-Cups contain the most coffee of any of our K-Cups and were designed especially to stay strong for larger serving sizes.
I found this site because our office uses a k-cup coffee maker and our trash can is full of k-cups, even thogh the office recycles and composts most other waste. I thought, “there HAS to be a compostable K-cup by now!”. Even a cup that is compostable once the metal top is removed? No.
So as I was reading through all the previous comments here, I realized 2 things: 1)People really want to feel good about using k-cups and a compostable version would go a long ways towards this goal, and 2) Ron (December 12, 2009) had a great idea! If there is already a reusuable k-cup dispensor, why can’t the coffee companies offer mini coffee pouches that fit in the dispensor? It would be a uniquely-shaped “tea” bag and it could be easily composted afterwards.
My company is a global fortune-500 firm with a commitment to environmental responsability and we would definately support a product like that!
At the very least, Keurig should have their own recycling system for the K-cups. The costs involved in recycling the cups would definitely be off-set or even eclipsed by the additional profits! I agree with the other comments that there has to be a way!
I too cringe every time I use my Keurig Coffee Machine. The coffee truly is excellent, but my enjoyment of it is diminished a little each day that I use it and watch my used k-cup pile grow. So far, my solution has been to save the cups for an artist friend, who hopes to make some art project out of them. With all of the resources that they are devoting to this problem, I agree that Green Mountain should be able to come up with some solution to reusing their own wasted K-cups, and I would gladly package mine up by the bushel and ship them back to wherever to assuage my guilt.
Perhaps the simplest solution would simply be to reuse the k-cups. I agree with Elizabeth (comment 18): “At the very least, Keurig should have their own recycling system for the K-cups.” Keurig should include a recycling center address where used k-cups can be shipped. As the k-cups are designed to handle high heat, it might be possible to simply wash them out and reuse them – or at least melt them down in mass into recyclable plastic pellets for use as new plastic products. One way or another we all need to stop all this over-packaged, throw-away plastic madness found on every store shelf in America!
I re-use the container with the plastic lids and use the grounds for plant fertilizer. I am thinking that I would rather see a solid housing with a hinged lid that I take out and wash used with a mesh disposable insert (similar to a tea bag). That way, the only thing going into the trash is completely biodegradable.
Folks,
I agree that the K-Cup coffee products taste great. I have used them (once) at the office. The reason I only used them once was because they are environmentally unfriendly. This is unfortunate. It is a good idea, sort of. That way coffee doesn’t go to waste like it does often times at most restaurants or at home. Often times people brew an entire pot, wasting alot of extra energy and materials by only using one cup or two out of the pot. In a sense, giving the end-user just the right amount of what he needs can be helpful in terms of quick brewing time, and only using that amount, not being wasteful. But, the problem is that the energy used in packaging, nevermind the materials used for the packaging, is very high.
The idea for the environmentally conscientious is to use less individually packaged items, and to migrate more towards things that don’t use superfluous packaging, or as little as possible. Instead of buying juice boxes for the children to take with their lunch, buy a 2L of juice, and ration it out in reuseable container by rubbermaid. Despite the fact that juice boxes are usually recycled, it takes energy and materials to recycle these things. If we don’t use them to begin with, then we don’t have to worry. The global population is rising, and we all need to be aware not to use such high amounts of energy and materials. We will need to stretch them out and make them last. These materials are not renewable (plastics), so we should take it easy on them.
Thats just my two cents. If millions of K-Cups end up in the landfills, it’s not the producer that’s to blame, it’s the consumer.
We all need to smarten up when it comes to this sort of thing.
Hey
If I designed a 100% compostable K-cup for Green Mountain and I didn’t charge them for the design, do you think they would use it?
I have been using the reusable mesh screen from Keurig and it often leads to weak coffee.
I have been thinking about this a lot and although I enjoy the coffee from the Keurig, I refuse to buy any more K-cups. (hint – there are probably a lot of people who are just like me).
I find it hard to believe that you cannot make a K-cup with a recyclable plastic (e.g., has a triangle with a number inside on the plastic) that won’t affect quality. Compostable k-cups would be nice but recyclable plastic k-cups should be the bare minimum.
The reusable k-cup, although it is sustainable, works very poorly and is a poor design. Water/coffee grounds come up through the top and spill all over the counter. The filter pieces are on the sides and there is no filter on the bottom. This allows the coffee to go out the sides rather than through the grounds. Thus you have a weak and watery tasting coffee. I have tried every different amount of coffee in the reusable cup with the same results. Too many grounds you get weak coffee. Too few grounds you get weak coffee. Medium amount of grounds you get weak coffee.
Hate to do it but I think I may have to switch back to the old system as my conscience is getting too me.
My company has the Keurig K-Cup systems throughout every lunchroom in at least 5 sites throughout the US. As an environmentalist I get a twinge up my spine every time I see a pile of K-Cups in the garbage with precious compostable coffee and tea going into landfill.
My first suggestion: Stop providing Tea in a K-Cup. It makes no sense, the old fashioned method of using a tea bag in hot water is just as good.
I also took it upon myself to take bag loads of used K-Cups home, extract the coffee and recycle the plastic. This was not easy due to the tinfoil top. I had envisioned a way to make a machine that would slice the K-Cup at the very top thus separating the tinfoil, then sift the coffee to the bottom to be used as compost and recycle the plastic. My wife soon put a stop to this as it made a mess and was time consuming. But some sort of enclosed box that could perform this task might be something to consider.
I applaud that your company is taking the environmental impact seriously but still am amazed that with all of the effort you seem to be putting forth that no headway has been made to correct this problem.
I agree that a recyclable cup should be an obvious first step, though I don’t have the plastics knowledge to know the possible barriers in that equation. The most promising and easy solution does seem to be a “pod” that is entirely compostable and designed to fit in a reuseable filter. This could improve the filter’s ability to produce strong coffee as well, if it were a nice snug fit that prevented water from moving around rather than through the coffee.
Basically, this is SO doable. I like the single-cup nature of my Keurig, but seeing all those little cups stack up shames me into french pressing and re-heating old coffee sometimes. I wish I had the strength to just chuck the K cups altogether rather than adding to the massive landfill problem.