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Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

We've got a Keurig (sp?) machine at the office and I've started wondering if those little plastic pods are leaching microplastics or other plastic-ish hydrocarbons into my coffee.

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They are certainly producing a lot of plastic trash.

It's the primary reason I stopped using coffee machines like that.

Purchase a metal basket from Amazon. They’re about seven dollars. I have one at the office, and use my own coffee grounds.

I don't know about microplastics, but "K-Cup creator John Sylvan regrets inventing Keurig coffee pod system":

* https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/k-cup-creator-john-sylvan-r...

If it’s any form of plastic, I guarantee some amount is leaking in esp if it’s hot water being pushed through it.

I went old style. Coffee beans, grinder and a French press. It’s awesome. But like all good things in life you need to wait 5-10 mins for coffee.

Supposedly paper filter is healthier because it filters out the cafestol

For me the biggest problem is the washing... but coffee tastes better this way.

I use a silicone spatula to clear most of whats in there into a compost bin. I drink a lot of coffee so it's still a _little_ cumbersome but it definitely helps the process a lot.

I have an Aeropress and the vast majority of time the cleanup is just pushing the plunger the rest of the way in, which pops out 99% of the grinds and the filter, and then you just rinse off the end of the plunger under a faucet, and it's clean. Extremely low maintenance, would recommend.

Yeah I have one at home and like it a lot. Still, it's plastic. Wish you could get one in pyrex or stainless.

There's some murmurings that Aeropress is planning to release a "Premium" model made of glass + stainless. Don't think there's any official web announcement to link to; think the new models were demo'ed at an expo or something.

https://coffeechronicler.com/aeropress-xl-premium/

A rinse generally does the trick and you can get a dishwasher safe French press. So far the coffee grounds have been kind to my garbage disposal.

Makes me wonder if there is other materials those cups could be made out of instead of plastic. Maybe paper or cardboard would be better.

Nespresso pods are made out of aluminum. I was wondering the other day if that's leaching into the coffee. I hear aluminum is not good to consume.

Tinfoil. Aluminum is extremely easy to recycle. Make coffee pods like soda cans, then toss them into soda can recycling. The smelter doesn't care whether they once held coke or coffee.

Won't 95% of them get thrown in the trash though? Do soda cans that are thrown in the trash can eventually make their way to recycling? And if not, is it a waste to consider how recyclable they are? There are probably obvious questions to some, but I genuinely don't know.

My experience has been that people are pretty good about recycling cans and plastic bottles. But, the pods might see less compliance. People get iffy if they think something is too dirty to be recycled, and maybe it is, so they have to open it and rinse it first, which also doesn't help compliance...

They’re too small and the recycling plant will filter them out to the trash.

They need to be compostable, instead.

last time people thought that about straws, and we ended up getting cancerous paper straws that are worse than plastic straws

My sister in Germany has a brand called Senseo. They are compostable pads.

Yes.

My sense is you're likely correct but do you have a source? I can't find confirmation and Keurig itself claims:

> Keurig® pods are BPA-free and constructed using only FDA approved food grade materials. In addition, the temperature of the water dispensed in Keurig® brewers is well below the melting and softening points of the pod materials. Therefore, no plastic leaches from the pod into your beverage.

It might be marketing-speak.

My partner is a biologist, finishing up a bio/chem phd specifically on detecting nano/microplastics in situ and their genomic effects. From my exposure to her work everything there is marketing speak. BPA is just one plasticizer that got too much bad press. There will be BPS, BPF, and/or a host of other plasticizers in those pods. None of them are innocuous. Passing acidic 90C water sounds like a pretty good extraction system for all sorts of compounds.

I don't have a source, because I'm not even sure if a study has ever been done. But my basic common sense tells me that putting hot (to boiling) water through plastic intended to be cheap enough it is disposable is likely going to leach some sort of plastics into the resultant beverage. BPA is not the only thing that can leach out of plastic.

you can switch to reusable metal ones with your coffee of choice

oh just wait until you find out what the water fountain is doing to you. And you don't even want to know about the myriad ways the elevator is slowly killing you. Just sayin.

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