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00:00Coffee companies produce around 50 billion pods in just a single year, and most of them go to landfills.
00:10Now, one Canadian company claims to have created a compostable coffee pod made using the leftovers of roasted beans.
00:20Club Coffee eliminated the plastics from single-serve pods their customers complained about.
00:26So what we were really solving for here was their guilt about the packaging.
00:32Brands like Keurig and Nespresso have spent tens of millions to make their pods more recyclable.
00:40But only a handful of facilities can process them.
00:44Are these efforts enough to keep pods out of the dump?
00:48And we asked a coffee YouTuber, what's the most convenient way to brew with the least amount of waste?
00:55You can have great cups of coffee without spending too much time in the thought process.
01:01Americans love coffee. They drink almost as much of it as bottled water.
01:07And one in four daily drinkers uses coffee pods, like this K-cup.
01:15Keurig got its start in the late 90s, marketing its no-mess product.
01:23A standard K-cup is made up of four parts.
01:27A cup made from polypropylene plastic, an aluminum lid, coffee grounds, and a paper filter that holds the coffee.
01:37Each component is technically recyclable, but by the time you take them apart and clean them, it's already made a mess.
01:47Not so convenient anymore.
01:49It took Club Coffee two years and three separate manufacturers to develop the PurePod 100, which is suitable for industrial composting.
01:59You can't just bury these in your backyard, but we'll get to that a bit later.
02:05Club Coffee in Ontario, Canada, has been roasting beans for their house label and other coffee brands for over 100 years.
02:13So I like to think of us as the little guys behind the big guys.
02:17We produce for some of the biggest brands and some of the biggest retailers in North America.
02:22Claudio Gamiti, the head of innovation at Club Coffee, is an industry veteran.
02:28He helped launch the PurePod 100 in 2016.
02:32It was an idea that was already percolating in my head. Sorry for the pun.
02:36That idea is to transform the leftovers from roasting beans into compostable plastic resin.
02:44Coffee beans are encased in a husk, or chaff, that gives the raw beans a greenish color.
02:51It falls off during roasting.
02:54The chaff, now brownish after cooking, heads to Competitive Green Technologies, or CGT,
03:02a company that develops plant-based resin pellets to replace plastic.
03:07It's estimated that for every ton of coffee produced, there's up to half a ton of chaff left over.
03:14For the most part, that ends up in landfill.
03:17Even though chaff is biodegradable, as it breaks down in landfills, it releases planet-warming methane.
03:24This facility makes the resin for the material that holds the compostable coffee pod together.
03:30Roughly a quarter of the ring is made up of coffee chaff.
03:33The recipe has three ingredients.
03:36The chaff, some plant-based resin made here, and this white stuff.
03:42The company says it's a compostable biopolymer, but wouldn't tell us what it's made of.
03:48The conveyor belts carry material to a hopper that heats the mix, before it hits an underwater extruder.
03:55And out come coffee-colored resin pellets.
04:00Technicians test the resin pellets before approving the run of a complete batch.
04:06Finally, the pellets get loaded into aluminum-lined containers, called Gaylords.
04:12The lining protects the resin from absorbing any more moisture and weakening it.
04:17We produce close to 1,300 pounds of pellets per Gaylord.
04:22These plastic-like pellets are what makes the PurePod simpler to compost.
04:27There's no separation required. There's no washing or cleaning required.
04:32In contrast, Keurig's recycling program has come under scrutiny.
04:37You know those numbers on the bottom of your plastic recyclables?
04:40K-cups were originally made of plastic number seven.
04:44That's the catch-all group of plastics that are nearly impossible to recycle.
04:49Many recyclers around the world only take two of the seven kinds of plastic.
04:54Plants often reject the other types, along with anything that's too dirty, and send them to landfills or incinerators.
05:02Keurig had a commercial at the time, as unique to recycle as it is to enjoy.
05:08And I knew, based on my own personal research, that that wasn't the case.
05:12This is Calvin Lacan. He's the lead researcher for the Waste Wiki project at York University.
05:19It's his job to study trash.
05:21I jokingly refer to myself as the garbage man when you think of garbage, think of me.
05:26He says the size of the pods make them hard for recycling operations to handle.
05:31It's too small and nobody wants it.
05:33So that's probably the easiest way to describe it.
05:35The pod itself will actually fall through the grates.
05:38Like, it's very difficult to capture in a best-case scenario.
05:42This new stream of waste infuriated some customers as Keurig gained popularity.
05:50The 2014 Kill the K-Cup campaign compared the product to a monster in a horror film.
05:57Oh my God! What is that thing?!
06:02In response to the backlash, Keurig started making pods from plastic number five, which is technically recyclable, but…
06:10Given the limitations of the existing system, it was not and is not being recycled.
06:15Environmentalists sued, saying Keurig's recyclability was false advertising.
06:21So in 2022, Keurig settled for $10 million.
06:26The company now attaches a warning label on any packaging claiming the K-Cups to be recyclable.
06:32Kind of a huge cop-out.
06:34Even if you live somewhere they can be recycled, the amount of work you have to do to prep the pods for drop-off pretty much ruins the convenience factor.
06:43That's one of the reasons the inventor of the K-Cup, John Sylvan, came to regret creating them.
06:49And that's what inspired Club Coffee's idea to make compostable pods.
06:55The hard ring is made here at Formark, using the biodegradable pellets we saw earlier.
07:04Formark spits out over a million of the rings every day.
07:09First, they test every batch for moisture when it arrives.
07:14Vacuums pull the pellets into an extruder to be heated.
07:18This makes the plastic-like material soft and moldable.
07:23It's shot into the ring mold with high pressure.
07:2764 at a time.
07:30When cool enough, they fall off the ring mold.
07:36Every one of them travels through this optical scanner to identify rejects.
07:41Now they're ready to put the Club Coffee Pure Pod together.
07:47The rings make the trip back to Club Coffee, where hundreds of thousands of pods run through this almost completely automated line every day.
07:57A machine sorts them as workers inspect the process.
08:03This filter paper will hold the coffee, instead of the usual aluminum and plastic.
08:09It's made out of polylactic acid, or PLA, which is a corn-based material.
08:15The pressing machine pulls filter paper from these large spools.
08:19Heated pistons press the filter into the familiar cup shape.
08:24Then, the machine fills several cups at a time with a single portion of coffee grounds.
08:30The ring holds everything together, before a paper top seals in the freshness.
08:36The company says that even the ink on its labels is 100% compostable.
08:42But here's the thing about the compostable cup.
08:45It will only break down at an industrial facility, where waste is kept at a higher constant temperature than backyard compost piles can reach.
08:55Even large metro areas like New York City don't yet have the capacity to fully compost the pods.
09:04Lastly, assembly line workers seal the Pure Pods into bags and cardboard boxes to ship around the world.
09:11Though some come in freshness bags like this, that can't be recycled or composted.
09:17Since launching the new product, Club Coffee has produced over 1 billion of these pods.
09:23But that's a drop in the bucket, compared to the 50 billion others produced each year.
09:29Many brands are delivering sustainable coffee, but what's the point of having sustainable coffee if the packaging is single use?
09:36Keurig took notice of the sentiment and in 2024 are introducing a mail-in recycling program for K-Cups.
09:43And a new plastic free compostable pod, the K-Round.
09:48However, customers will need to buy an entirely new machine to use the new pods.
09:53So, what about Keurig's top competitor, Nespresso?
09:57The Swiss company was actually the first to bring single-serve coffee to the home market in 1986.
10:04Nespresso's smaller, espresso-style machines dominate the European market.
10:10And since launching a full-cup brewer, it started to take Keurig's market share.
10:15Nespresso pods are made from aluminum, not plastic.
10:19Aluminum is one of the rare materials that can be recycled again and again without losing its physical properties.
10:24But the cost of doing so is significantly higher.
10:28These days, customers can either send used pods back to Nespresso in prepaid envelopes or drop them off at any of its 250 boutique stores.
10:38The company began its European recycling program in 1991, followed with its mail-in options in the U.S. in 2013.
10:48Nespresso spends millions every year on recycling, including funding municipalities that don't already have the necessary equipment.
10:56We visited Nespresso's recycling operation in New York City in 2019.
11:02That year, Nespresso installed a $1.2 million shredding and sorting machine capable of separating the tiniest bits of metal.
11:12This means New York City residents can simply drop aluminum pods in their recycling boxes on the curb.
11:18The company claims that nearly 35% of its U.S. customers recycle their pods.
11:25But that comes with a hefty price tag.
11:28In 2022, Nespresso spent almost $90 million on various recycling projects.
11:34So when it comes to coffee pots, what's the best option?
11:38I think the Pure Pot is a wonderful foundation.
11:41A lot of people don't realize it, but recycling rates are trending down.
11:44So I think composting of organics represents a significant opportunity.
11:49U.S. recycling rates tumbled to an all-time low of just 5% of all plastics in the past few years.
11:57A big reason? Single-use plastics, a category that includes K-cups.
12:02So you may be watching this and going, oh my goodness, everything has all this waste.
12:06I mean, producing the coffee itself is very wasteful.
12:09Lance Hedrick is an award-winning barista turned coffee YouTuber.
12:14He's purchased and reviewed hundreds of brewing devices for his channel.
12:18And he wants you to know, there are many ways to prepare a top-notch cup without creating extra trash.
12:25I really enjoy everything that coffee has to offer.
12:28But he wasn't always a connoisseur.
12:31Growing up, I did drink that Keurig and it was awful.
12:34And going back to it, I can't understand how I was ever able to even stomach it without putting just a ton of milk and sugar in it.
12:40Coffee production leaves behind 23 million tons of solid waste every year.
12:46That's everything from bean to cup.
12:49And that's not even mentioning the huge amount of energy it takes to grow, roast, and ship coffee around the world.
12:56The way that you handle your coffee is so much more important when you think about all of the waste that's already occurred.
13:03So consumers really only control how they get liquid coffee into their mouth.
13:08We decided to compare the solid waste leftovers from different ways to drink.
13:13So we've got filter drips, pods, and even a couple popular takeout options.
13:18Plus, Lance is going to show a couple of his coffee gadgets.
13:21We have a French press which you can get anywhere for quite cheap.
13:26If you're a pod person, we have some bad news.
13:29You're always going to be left with extra waste for every cup.
13:32That's the pod itself.
13:34A K-cup comes out of the machine at 25 grams.
13:38A full cup Nespresso Vertuo weighs 22 grams, about the same.
13:43And the new kid on the block?
13:45Club Coffee's Pure Pod, wet, that's 26 grams.
13:49It's supposed to break down as long as it makes it to an industrial composter.
13:54Otherwise, this is landfill.
13:56And let's turn back to Lance for his go-to, the V60 pour-over.
14:01Unlike the French press, this one uses a paper filter.
14:05So the filter looks like this, just kind of a 60 degree.
14:08It's called V60 because it's 60 degrees.
14:11Just going to take the coffee, dump it right in.
14:16So we pour that into our cup.
14:18We have a beverage.
14:23Delicious.
14:24When all is said and done, the amount of waste you have here is whatever's in this paper filter.
14:29As long as that's an all-natural paper filter, it will break down within months.
14:34At this point, maybe it's just easier to grab a to-go coffee.
14:38That's 26 grams for this large, and 29 grams for this one.
14:43So out of all of these, which should you choose?
14:46The French press wins.
14:48No paper, and any leftovers go right to compost.
14:51But if your coffee consumption is more about the caffeine jolt than flavor,
14:56then instant coffee may be the best option.
14:59And the process of making instant coffee is a lot less wasteful,
15:02because it is using less coffee to extract more.
15:06So the extraction is very, very, very high.
15:10Instant coffee.
15:11The freeze-dried concentrate leaves nothing at the end.
15:14But be warned.
15:16The instant coffee is typically made from the rejected coffees whenever sorting is going on.
15:21So instant coffee is very low quality.
15:23But I would take it over the cup that I get from a K-cup.
15:26.