A more sustainable single-cup coffee pod?

Keurig's single-cup coffee machines are owned by roughly 15% of consumers in the U.S., and the waste from the single-cup pods of coffee is a growing problem. In an article from The Guardian titled As the single-cup coffee heats up, a small rival hacks Keurig's machine, it is stated that the total amount of k-cups that have been sold since the single-cup Keurig machine was introduced would wrap around the equator about 45 times if lined up end-to-end! That is a lot of waste! And worse still, Keurig has only made 5% of its k-cups out of recycled plastic, and only a fraction of those pods are fully recyclable. All in all, over 35.5 billion pods have been sold, and most - if not all - are sitting in a landfill.

This is alarming, and steps had been taken to reduce this waste. Third party coffee companies - Rogers Family Coffee and Club Coffee - were producing their own sustainable (compostable) single-cup coffee pods for use in the Keurig machines, thus helping alleviate the problem. Unfortunately, Keurig didn't like the competition, so the company released a new machine (Keurig 2.0) in August of 2014 that would reject any third party pods by scanning to check for a proper Keurig ink stamp on the top of the pod (this even rejected the 1st generation k-cups). This trick was soon hacked by Jon B Rogers, president of Rogers Family Coffee.

Rogers formed a little piece of plastic he dubbed the 'Freedom Clip' so that it could sit between the scanner and the pod, which then falsely confirms the pod as being a Keurig k-cup. Then he made a strategic marketing decision: he offered the Freedom Clip to anyone for free. At first, Rogers sent out 10,000 Freedom Clips to anyone who requested one, along with 3 single-cup pods. However, shipping costs became too much, and he had to decide on another way to distribute the clip. He wanted the clip to remain a free item, especially because it has created immense brand awareness for the company and had also delighted tens of thousands of consumers.

I checked the Rogers Family Coffee website, and the company now sells its 97% compostable pods with a free Freedom Clip inside the package:

This appears to be the feasible way to continue free distribution of the clip. The CEO of Club Coffee, John Pigott, is obviously happy to hear of the success of the Freedom Clip, and has said, "[t]hey've effectively wedged the market open for those people that want choice ... [t]here's nothing wrong with a little competition. I don't know why a company [Keurig's] size is afraid of it." Perhaps Keurig is afraid because sales of the new 2.0 version haven't met expectations.

Beside the underachieving performance of the new machine, Keurig is planning on producing its own sustainable single-cup pods. The company aims to have fully recyclable k-cups by 2020! The goal is heading in the right direction, but 5 years seems like too long to wait for this promise. Imagine the additional waste from 5-years-worth of single-cup coffee pods just sitting in landfills. Thankfully, innovators like Jon B Rogers allow us to use the machine with our own sustainable single-cup pods.

** Both the Rogers Family Coffee Co. and Club Coffee plan to release 100% compostable pods in a few months **

Works Cited

Messinger, Leah. "As the Single-cup Coffee War Heats Up, a Small Rival Hacks Keurig's Machine." The Guardian. The Guardian, 24 Feb. 2015. Web. 2 Mar. 2015. <http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/feb/24/keurig-2-0-hack-cups-company-freedom-clip>.