Keurig Coffee Creates Demand For Disposable Products
by Katherine Millsap
http://www.forconstructionpros.com/article/12040028/fuel-for-thought-coffee-waste-provides-energy-for-cement-plant
The Keurig Coffee machine, produced by Keurig Green Mountain
Coffee Company, forces the consumer who wants to use their single cup coffee
machines to buy coffee pods (called K-cups) that are single use and
non-recyclable. Their previous line of
coffee makers, the K-cup Brewers, are their most popular line and were capable
of utilizing plastic reusable coffee pods that could be filled with grounds for
each cup of coffee. This line was
environmentally friendly as the only waste from making a cup of coffee was
compostable coffee grinds. However, along the lines of new products from technology companies, Keurig has come out with a new coffee brewer line
called the Keurig 2.0 Brewer. This
new generation of coffee brewers has been aggressively advertised as an improvement from former
models and therefore worthy of upgrading to.
This new line of coffee brewers has shown to have only minor
improvements by adding a carafe so larger amounts of coffee can be made, but the
environmental impact has drastically increased. The new K-cups for this latest brewer are
not only unable to be recycled as the previous K-cups were, but also the
company has not created a reusable pod.
This forces the consumer who wants to buy the newest machine to use
environmentally damaging products.
What Keurig is doing is intentionally creating a demand for
products that follow the Planned Obsolescence business strategy. They have created the demand for the
newest and shiniest model with few improvements that effect the actual use of
the machine and then cornered the market with coffee pods that are one-time use
and non-recyclable ultimately creating the never ending need for consumers to buy K-cups.
Keurig has reported that they sold over 9.8 billion K-cups
in 2014, the vast majority of these are
non-recyclable and end up
in landfills. With the sheer volume of
waste these brewers create, and the company refusing to create reusable pods
for their latest generation, one must ask themselves if the convenience of a
Keurig brewer is worth the environmental impact of their use?
http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/coffee-pods-the-new-eco-villain/
For Keurig’s Sustainability Statement and 2020 Environmental
Plans:
Article from The
Atlantic with Interview of Keurig Inventor and Former Owner John Sylvan:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/the-abominable-k-cup-coffee-pod-environment-problem/386501/
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