Hacker News Reader

Comment by nukemandan | Hacker News Reader

Why is this so much of an issue? I agree that is it a more wasteful way to do coffee than other machines, but not significantly so. Why is everyone so up-in-arms about this vs any other single serve item, like water bottles, soda, and tea/coffee cans? The shipping costs alone for moving what amounts to mostly water and all the packaging make pods look innocent or better.

View on HN

Oh, people are up in arms about other single-serve items as well. Bottled water and excessive plastic packaging are two most ridiculous examples of what our economy has created.

Keurig cups are special though, being the archetype of a business completely fucking people over on multiple layers. Beyond all the plastic waste, there's also aspect of vendor lock-in and (recently) DRMing the coffee making process.

Those things are all dumb, too. Coffee pods are just so easy to replace. Just make coffee like normal.

It's a little more nuanced compared to water bottles. Coffee powder needs to be kept in a sealed container to be 'fresh' (apart from expiry). So if you don't drink coffee often, pads could be a more sensible choice.

Or just seal the bag and throw it in freezer.

> Coffee powder needs to be kept in a sealed container to be 'fresh'

There's no shortage of those sealed containers. If someone has a Keurig machine, and is using those pods, then they also have a refrigerator and are able to obtain containers, which are inexpensive.

There is no real argument for keurig cups other than convenience.

Is that convenience worth all of the waste? Should people be able to choose to generate such waste for something so trivial? Should be firms be allowed to sell waste-generators like Keurig? If Keurig is not responsible for the mountains of damage done, and the consumers are not responsible, then where does the buck stop?

This area is ripe for regulation and well overdue.

>There is no real argument for keurig cups other than convenience.

This is true at anything that one purchases - you outsource the effort for a fee. All single serve items are the same or worse as the keurig in terms of waste that makes things easy.

> Should people be able to choose to generate such waste for something so trivial?

Yes.

>If Keurig is not responsible for the mountains of damage done, and the consumers are not responsible, then where does the buck stop?

Customers vote with their dollars. They are not to blame for the waste - but not free of responsibility. Want to make change? Stand up for what you believe and get others to join you. Don't make anyone do anything by force (regulation).

all those things are easy to replace too - just fill a water bottle from a filtered source and get a soda CO2 injection machine + syrup. coffee is about the same amount of work and needed equipment to make.

Yes significantly so. Compare buying bulk coffee and brewing a large carafe like Sylvan says, to K-Cups. First it's more expensive for you. Second you have unrecyclable plastic waste. Third what could once be composted now gets thrown into anaerobic landfill.

And people are up in arms about water bottles. This is just another ridiculous capitalist scheme that trades marginal convenience against our planet's future. It's no a significant source of pollution by itself but ingrains a culture of disposability that has created most of the pollution on earth.

>First it's more expensive for you. Second you have unrecyclable plastic waste. Third what could once be composted now gets thrown into anaerobic landfill.

1 - not if I take time/effort into account, or having someone prepare it for me 2 - How much less efficient is this than a coffee can/bag and filters? 3 - how much coffee is really composted anyway? how much of that is used productively?

95% outrage culture/5% environmental concern.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com