Coffee. We love it – need it – curse its control over (most) of us. For the coffee lover, there is no aroma more compelling than freshly brewed coffee. We make our own, stand in line for someone else to make our coffee, complain about the swill in the office. We pretty much plan our lives around the next refill.
And then, COVID 19. The world stopped. We went home and stockpiled sanitizing products and toilet paper. Then we remembered the coffee.
Image credit: PNGitem
Personally, I’ve been on Team K Cup since its introduction back when we paid for minutes on cell phone plans. What I’ve learned is that I am not unique - 42% of American households own a Keurig. 2021 consumption was estimated to surpass 30 billion K Cups. That breaks down to over 25 million Keurig & K Cup brewers in homes and offices in the US. So many plastic cups! (Source: https://intelligentblends.com/the-growth-of-k-cup-usage-during-covid-19/)
How did COVID and the shutdown impact K Cup consumption? Well, we brewed up enough cups to create a 7% increase in weekly sales of single service coffee during 2020 & 2021.
What spurred the increase?
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1. More people working from home and not getting out to coffeehouses – we had limited outlets for the caffeine fix
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2. Cutting back spending - one of the first splurges to go when tightening the budget is coffee house purchases. So unfair!
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3. Consumers buying coffee directly – when they bring the K Cups to your door, how do you say no? And, not every supermarket has the delicate cinnamon blend I crave.
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4. Consumers embracing sustainability – we had a little extra time since we were commuting to the dining room to think about what we’re doing to the planet. Personally, I think all the decluttering/purging/minimalism programs shamed us into action.
As we’ve learned from setting goals in our careers and personal lives, measuring results is critical to success in any program – from exercise, weight loss, gas mileage, and more. We need hard evidence to support the extra work we do to reach a goal.
Thankfully, there are organizations to help us track – and provide the documentation to show how the hard work pays off. One company is Illinois-based G2 Revolution which will design programs to help organizations track sustainability programs. Here’s an example:
E Ink Corporation in South Hadley, Massachusetts produces ePaper for use in modules that will become ePaper devices around the world. As part of E Ink’s sustainability initiative, they track the recycling efforts of K Cups.
If you are familiar with K Cups and recycling, you know that K Cups have a plastic cup, with a filter and coffee inside, covered with a foil seal. They don’t weigh much, especially the plastic cup.
When recycling, the plastic is separated from the coffee and filter and foil seal. In January of 2022, the South Hadley facility reclaimed 37.9 pounds of plastic K Cups. For something that weighs a fraction of an ounce – sounds like a lot of coffee!
Image credit: G2 Revolution
Image credit: G2 Revolution
So, I weighed the empty K cup – 10 cups = 1 ounce. So I did the math – are you ready??
In one month – 21 business days – this one site made 6,080 cups of coffee! About 264 cups per day, just under 200 people at the site. Imagine that some are not caffeine-motivated – there are some serious coffee connoisseurs in western Massachusetts!
I average 2 cups of coffee per day, maybe an extra cup on the weekend. Let’s say I use 15 K Cups per week. I separate the cup from the filter, coffee and seal, then rinse the cup and put it in my recycle bin. I’m burning through 60 K Cups in 30 days. Extrapolate that to a year - 720 K cups! Just me. I’m really curious to track all the K Cups used by me and my guests - and see what my recycling effort nets in weight.
What do you think about K Cup brewers and other single serve brewing systems? Let us know!
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