On Sustainability and Keurig
This is a blog where I write about Millennials. It's in the name, and it's in the content matter I've published thus far. This isn't a topic limited to Millennials, but I think that Sustainability is an issue that really is uniquely Millennial.I say that because Sustainability is not just a buzzword to my generation. It is a word we were raised hearing, it is a word that is in our consciousness, and it is a word that will affect my generation like it has not affected generations past.
I've argued before that the inherent Sustainability ethos is a reason to hire Millennials. I would really like to repeat that point. For businesses who make Sustainability a priority (and let's be real about the fact that being a successful business today relies on making it a priority), hiring Millennials is a must, since a commitment to Sustainability is in every decision we make. You may have grown up with white guilt or Catholic guilt, but we all grew up with environmental guilt.
Anyway, this is a post of an Op-Ed I wrote as an assignment for school. You may point out that I'm a little late to hating on Keurig--it has been all the rage lately in Mother Jones, The Atlantic, and in viral video land. But, the thing about this great nation, and especially in the Internet age, is that we're really good at identifying a problem, defining that problem in front of an audience, and then doing absolutely nothing about it. And I saw a chance here that I might actually be able to make some change. Now, admittedly I'm trying to do this by calling hypocrisy and embarrassing my department into ditching their Keurig--but I'm genuine in my offer to give them my old drip machine or to buy them a refillable pod. I'm not so cold as to leave these people I like without their coffee.
This is the Op-Ed:
Time to Beat the Keurig Habit and Give More Sustainable Brewing a Shot
In an hour last week, three people performed the same ritual in the office’s reception. Open the Keurig, drop in the K-cup, place the Styrofoam cup to brew into, throw away the remnants, and walk away with a hot cup of coffee. It was simple and convenient, yet the wastefulness of the K-cups (compounded by the Styrofoam) seemed in discordance with an office that just a month prior held a two-day seminar on Sustainability.
This office was the University of Denver’s Institute for Public Policy Studies, where I am a Master’s student. But this is a scene playing out in offices and homes across the world, countless times everyday. The National Coffee Association has conducted its national survey of U.S. coffee consumption, called the National Coffee Drinking Trends, since 1950, and this survey shows that use of single-cup brewing systems is on a steady rise. In 2010, just 4 percent of respondents reported drinking a coffee made in a single-cup brewer yesterday. Four years later, 29 percent reported drinking single-cup brewed coffee yesterday. In 2014, 15 percent of American households already owned a single-cup brewer, and 25 percent of households that didn’t own a single-cup brewer reported that they are likely to buy a single-cup brewer in the next six months.
The single-serving coffee maker is ubiquitous, and Keurig is by far the brand of choice. In 2014, Keurig Green Mountain sold 9.8 billion Keurig-brewed portion packs. And, despite a media storm that would have you believe that Keurig is on the decline, Keurig stock was still up 90 percent by the end of last year, and was one of the best performers on the S&P for 2014.
Though Keurig is brewing business success, Keurig’s massive growth is an environmental nightmare. When 29 percent of the population is throwing a K-cup in the trash every day, the nation’s coffee habit creates enough waste to circle the earth more than 12 times.
The real problem is that diverting even some of this waste to recycling is near impossible. Since 95 percent of K-cups are made of a specialized plastic #7, few recycling centers will accept the cups. Even if consumers separated the few recyclable parts from the filter, grounds, and plastic foil top, those recyclable parts would likely be rejected because they are too small.
Recognition of Keurig’s environmental consequences is building steam, with recent write-ups in Mother Jones and The Atlantic, and a high production viral video, Kill the K-Cup, which has amassed over 650,000 views on its official YouTube channel and an additional 57,000 views on Vimeo.
In reaction to the uproar, Keurig Green Mountain has set three sustainability goals to achieve by 2020, including 100 percent recyclable K-Cups, reducing greenhouse gas emissions of brewed beverages 25 percent versus 2012, and achieving zero landfill waste at manufacturing and distribution facilities. This drive for sustainability in the next five years seems disingenuous following the release of Keurig’s three 2.0 brewers, which are only compatible with Keurig brand K-Cups. The 2.0’s change in technology makes it impossible for users to use their own beans, or to use more sustainable coffee pod options, such as this refillable pod by Solofill or compostable pods like those from OneCup or Club Coffee.
Even if Keurig is committed to fully recyclable pods, the deadline of 2020 seems far off considering other companies are already producing alternatives. Perhaps this deadline is far in the future because Keurig is hoping to introduce a product with the same quality as the K-Cups they already produce. However, John Sylvan, the inventor of the K-Cup, doubts it is possible to create a fully recyclable K-Cup of the same quality. Sylvan told The Atlantic this month that “no matter what they say about recycling, those things will never be recyclable.”
So, what is a person--or an office--to do? It should seem obvious by this point that Keurig is an unsustainable coffee habit. For owners of an original Keurig machine, the answer may be as easy as buying refillable pods or compostable pods by third-party producers. For those of us still sustaining ourselves on drip coffee, we may have to forego the convenience of buying a new single-cup brewer.
The most difficult challenge is recognizing that we might have to sacrifice a little convenience and reevaluate our expectations. I’m not going to dispute that single-cup brewers save time and allow a group of people the freedom not to compromise on drink selection, but weren’t we all living just fine without this extra convenience just a few years ago? Our landfills were certainly doing better without them.
As for my University’s office, I’m offering them my old drip machine, or in the case that they have an original Keurig machine, I’ll be happy to buy them a refillable pod and their first bag of gourmet beans. The wonderful thing about this problem is that tamping down waste should be easy and not too inconvenient.
