Turns out coffee pods are pretty good for the environment (2019)

>According to research by Halo, a British producer of compostable coffee capsules, every minute about 39,000 of these pods are made worldwide, while up to 29,000 are dumped in landfill sites.

29 000 every minute.

I find it really hard to believe that this is better than the traditional espresso.

IMO the way this blog post is written makes it seem sponsored by capsule manufacturers, which have huge margins versus traditional espresso.

Interesting article. It really does highlight how “just put it in a landfill” can be a legitimate strategy.

What about the carbon footprint if the coffee is brewed with renewable energy? Depending on how you brew your coffee, I can see pods scoring worse as they would have the hard to recycle plastic waste, vs none at all.

Also, what about the health impact of micro plastics leached when the capsules get heated up?

What about the extra shipping costs of all these little pods vs a bulk purchase of beans from a local shop? The big bag is more efficient to ship.

No way Nespresso pods are lined with silicon, right? Maybe silicone? There are a bunch of sites repeating “silicon” and several others saying “food grade lacquer”.

Pedantry assistance appreciated.

It's an interesting argument, but it doesn't address how you balance electricity usage, biodegradable waste, and non-biodegradable waste.

Let's assume the article is correct and coffee pods result in more efficient use of the coffee. How much more efficient does this have to be to balance out all the extra plastic?

Just comparing the energy needed for growing/processing coffee and manufacturing pods isn't enough. How do you factor in all the pod waste? What is the metric there?

The article argues that recycling coffee pods is feasible... but I've never heard of anyone actually doing that, and I don't see how they ever would.

I didn't assess the study itself, but it focuses on the wrong metric. Even if a single coffee pod were to be more CO2-efficient than an espresso from an espresso machine, the popularity and consumerist approach makes it so that you will have more coffee (rebound effect). Without a nespresso machine in the office or at home, would you walk out to the coffee shop for a coffee 3 times a day?

Coffee is made from an exotic plant and should be treated as a special treat, not a "brain enhancing" commodity like it is today. If people had this mindset, it wouldn't matter how you brew your coffee.

>And according to new research, recyclable aluminium pods are more environmentally friendly than all other capsules, whether they are made from plastic or compostable materials.

What's the environmental impact of large burlap bags or those small aluminum/plastic bags that hold less than a pound? Just as good as any other solution that doesn't require customers to recycle?

> His team found that instant coffee comes out best, but that capsules are the runner up in the environmental impact stakes. Filter or drip coffee comes third, while traditional espresso has the worst environmental impact. “The impact, such as greenhouse gas emissions, water and fertiliser use, mostly occurs where the coffee is grown,” says Hill. “Capsules tend to need less coffee input to make a single drink and so their overall impact can be lower even though we see more waste when we throw them away.”

I find it difficult to believe that the 2 tablespoons-of-coffee per 8-oz cup has a bigger environmental impact than the plastic-bit.

I think I see the argument, but its hard for me to agree to it.

EDIT: Hmm... there's a cool heuristic that I always go back to whenever we start measuring small things. Assume all weights have the same environmental impact: because the biggest user of greenhouse gasses is the truck (or boat, or train) used to transport the material.

EDIT: So 2-tablespoons of coffee weighs ~10-grams. The article quotes 5.7 grams of coffee per capsule. How heavy is the capsule? If the capsule itself is 4.3 grams (or less), then maybe you're saving energy on transportation costs.

EDIT: My bet however, is that a bag of coffee beans delivers the greatest coffee-to-weight ratio and is the most environmentally sound. Coffee Filters are extremely light, and there are steel mesh reusable filters if you care about the environmental impact of disposable paper filters.

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> Aside from the environmental impact of growing beans in the first place, the second biggest hit is the energy it takes to brew coffee. That’s why barista-made espresso fares so badly in terms of its environmental footprint: a lot of energy is needed to brew just a tiny single espresso cup. Capsules, on the other hand, are more efficient. The coffee machines only flash-heat the amount of water needed for one portion, unlike, for example, boiling a kettle.

Cold brew for the win? I actually prefer cold brew whenever I do things myself for taste reasons. (Less bitterness). Cold brew is also more convenient: I pull it out of the fridge, then drink without any wait time.

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> Sebastien Humbert, an expert in life-cycle assessment studies at Quantis, a company that works with many organisations to improve their sustainability, cautions that if you take a responsible consumer — not an average consumer — then it is possible to make drip-filter coffee with less negative impact than capsules, albeit just ever so slightly. “However, if you are an irresponsible consumer, if your drip filter machine is very inefficient, if you leave it on, if you make more coffee than necessary, then you can make drip-filter coffee significantly worse than capsules,” he says.

Okay: so it seems like they're assuming irresponsible and wasteful behavior on behalf of drip-coffee makers.

Everything that comes out of these pods tastes like plastic to me. I can't see the attraction.