For years on Treehugger, we have shaken our heads in wonder at the concept of recycling coffee pods. Seriously, how many people who pay four times as much for the convenience of pod coffee are then going to go to the trouble of taking it apart and recycling it? I tried once in a hotel that had a machine in my room and you can see the mess in the photo. I wrote, “The coffee pod represents the ultimate triumph of convenience over sensibility. Recycling them is a feel-good sham.”
Now Keurig Canada has settled with the Competition Bureau Canada “to resolve concerns over false or misleading environmental claims made to consumers about the recyclability of its single-use Keurig K-Cup pods.” According to Competition Bureau Canada:
Keurig was fined $2.3 million (CA$3 million) as a penalty and will donate $632,000 (CA$800,000) to a Canadian charity focused on environmental causes. It also has to publish corrective notices on its website and on social media.
Keurig was also sued in the U.S. for its recyclability claims and settled, but the terms have not been made public; an announcement of it is due in February 2022. The wording of the American lawsuit is interesting, noting that:
Keurig pods are now made of polypropylene, labeled #5, which is theoretically recyclable, but only about 3% actually is and you can bet that not much of that is from coffee pods. As this overview of polypropylene recycling notes, the process includes sorting, cleaning, reprocessing by melting at 500 degrees Fahrenheit, a high enough temperature to get rid of contaminants. It’s no wonder that nobody bothers.
All the coffee pod companies pretend to recycle. In Europe, Nespresso has elaborate collection and recycling processes, but it takes a lot of energy and effort to run, and nobody can tell you if it is anything more than performative going through the motions. They do it because as sustainability innovator Leyla Acaroglu writes in her article “System Failures: Planned obsolescence and enforced disposability,” recycling validates waste.
We have noted before how we can only marvel at how successful industry has been at making the world safe for single-use products, and how people think recycling is the greatest thing they can do for the environment and to live a longer and healthier life. These companies are the convenience industrial complex, where they sell us single-use products and then convince us that recycling makes it all fine, and we are virtuous and wonderful for picking up their garbage. I wrote earlier:
The lesson from the Keuring lawsuits in Canada and the U.S. is that it was all a lie. They are no different from any other company labeling its single-use product as recyclable; everything is, and nothing is.
