#killthekcup

To say I hate Keurig K-Cups is an understatement. The coffee (if it can be called coffee) produced from those little plastic pods is simply vile. The cost per cup is astounding (over $40 per pound). But the environmental impact of those non-recyclable cups is vomit inducing.

Even the inventor of the K-Cup is trying to atone for his mistakes:

He [John Sylvan] sold the stock a couple years ago when it broke $140. He also recently started a new company that sells solar panels, partly to atone for the environmental problem he believes he created. The company is called Zonbak, which means “sun bucket,” in Dutch.

“I don't have one. They're kind of expensive to use,” John Sylvan told me frankly, of Keurig K-Cups, the single-serve brewing pods that have fundamentally changed the coffee experience in recent years. “Plus it’s not like drip coffee is tough to make.” Which would seem like a pretty banal sentiment, were Sylvan not the inventor of the K-Cup.

A Deeper Look at the #KillTheKCup Movement via CNBC

Keurig K-Cups, the single-serve brewing pods, have revolutionized the coffee experience for some. But for others, the non-recyclable and non-biodegradable cups have incited a lot of frustration, reports The Atlantic.

Last year, Keurig sold more than 9 billion of the pods, which accounted for most of the company's $4.7 billion in revenue.

But earlier this year a YouTube video called "Kill the K-Cup" went viral, anonymously calling out the pods as a hazard to the environment and "extremely wasteful and irresponsible."

Move over, Godzilla. There’s a new monster ravaging the streets, and it’s covered in K-Cups—those single-serving plastic pods used in Keurig coffee machines. Not scary enough for you? Alien spacecraft fly through the air, firing lethal K-Cup “bullets” at people.

At least that’s what’s going down in this invasion parody video from Mike Hachey, head of Egg Studios, a video production outfit based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Hachey is trying to raise awareness of the environmental impact of the tiny containers, which, like plenty of other plastic waste, end up in landfills.

Hachey has firsthand experience with the amount of trash a Keurig machine can generate. Last year he purchased one of the devices for the 22-person Egg Studios staff to use.

“We basically decided, ‘You know what? This is just too wasteful,’ ” he told NPR. That brief experience with K-Cups made Hachey and his crew want to educate other users—and potential purchasers of Keurig machines—about the effect all that plastic can have on our planet.

About 95 percent of K-Cups are made from #7 plastic, which usually isn’t biodegradable andmay contain BPA. As for the remaining 5 percent of the pods, it’s tough to recycle them because the plastic container is attached to a foil lid—a big no-no for recycling centers.

A 2013 survey from the National Coffee Association found that nearly one in eight American households owns a single-serving coffee machine, and last year Keurig Green Mountain, the manufacturer of the machines and the pods, produced 9.8 billion K-Cups. There’s no way to tell how many of those ended up in landfills.

So is all hope lost on the K-Cup front? Not necessarily. Other businesses, such as the San Francisco Coffee Company, are producing biodegradable containers. They aren’t official K-Cups, but they can be used with Keurig machines. One of Keurig Green Mountain’s sustainability goals is for 100 percent of K-Cups to be recyclable by 2020. But that’s a full five years away, ample time for billions more pods to litter the earth.