Green Eggs and Ham… and Coffee?

Keurig, Tossimo, Mr. Coffee, Nespresso, Tim Horton’s, Starbucks, etc.

… How ever you get your morning coffee, have you thought about how it affects the environment? We just added a Keurig to our home and before I knew it I realized I have no idea what to do with the K-cups.

So with a little research, I came to this:

Type	Recyclable?	# of years to biodegrade in a landfill
Tim Horton’s / Starbucks Paper Cups	Plastic lid is recyclable in your blue bin. Paper cup can be disposed of in your green bin / compost.	Plastic lid  - 15 years + decades longer Paper cup – 15 years
K-Cups (Keurig / Mr. Coffee/Nespresso)	There are three layers to every K-cup. The foil lid can be pulled off and recycled. The coffee grinds inside can be disposed of in your green bin / compost. The filter inside the cup is made of paper and can be recycled with paper products being sure to remove as many food particles as possible. The outer plastic shell is not recyclable.	Full cup – hundreds of years
T-discs (Tassimo)	Similar K-cups, T-discs have three layers. The foil lid can be pulled off and recycled, but you need cut out the barcode in order to recycle it. The filter inside the cup is made of paper and can be recycled with paper products being sure to remove as many food particles as possible. The outer plastic shell is recyclable where recycling programs exist.	Full cup – hundreds of years
Home Coffee Percolator	Coffee grinds and filter are 100% biodegradable in your green bin / compost	Filter and coffee grinds – 1 year or less Note – the coffee filters (white ones) have some bleach in them, but with all my research the amount is minimal and can be decomposed without worrying about adding chemicals to the compost.

(Note – the above information is dependent on brand and could differ accordingly)

In the end, the tried and true home coffee percolaters are the most environmentally friendly. So why have so many switched to this new one use system that puts billions of plastic cups into landfills every year? Convenience… isn’t that the answer all the time these days?

I won’t continue on a tree-hugging rant because frankly no one wants to hear it and… we bought a Keurig last week! So what are our other options if we have these brewers at home:

Keurig Option – EcoBrew Elite (http://www.ekobrew.com/)

(Picture taken from - www.ekobrew.com)

This seems like the best of both worlds, saves on money and there is virtually no waste. Only problem, Mike and I don’t drink coffee. So it isn’t our best option for the coffee alternative K-cups, however I will keep researching. In the meantime, my work has a program where they collect all the used K-cups and return them to the manufacturer for proper recycling and disposal.

As for the Tassimo, their brand includes the slogan “The barcode brews it better”. Because of this, they have not come up with an alternative reusable pod (that I can see). That being said, their pods are recyclable as noted above, so it is slightly more environmentally friendly to start than most K-cups.

As for your morning Tim Horton’s or Starbucks coffee, think twice before tossing them in the trash. Every year, 58 billion paper cups are thrown into landfills. In order to make those cups, 20 million trees are cut down and 12 billion gallons of water are used. (stats taken from - http://www.thebetacup.com/about/).

So if that morning cup of joe is what you need, just take a second to think of your impact on the environment with each sip. Maybe instead of 58 billion paper cups among the billions of K-cups and T-discs, you can reduce it by just one… in the hopes of that number getting smaller and smaller with each cup.