The K-Cup Coffee Pod Problem | Hacker News Reader

The K-Cup Coffee Pod Problem

theatlantic.com

64 pointsjsc12354 comments

"It’s digital rights management, the coffee equivalent of Steve Jobs’ attempt to fill iPods only with music sold through iTunes."

What?? Not really. Keurig machines refuse to use anything other than a Keurig-brand K-Cup. The iPod always played non-DRMed music. It just wouldn't play music with DRM from other stores.

Any store willing to sell music without DRM is/was perfectly compatible with the iPod.

Until iTunes deleted music not bought on the iTunes store... \ source: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/04/apple-dele...

It's worth noting that the music that was deleted was "protected" by a reverse-engineered version of Apple's DRM, and the "deletion" was Apple dropping support for old, broken versions of FairPlay. iPods always played everyone's DRM free music and never tried not to, as far as I know.

>What?? Not really. Keurig machines refuse to use anything other than a Keurig-brand K-Cup.

That's not true.. there are several no Keurig-brand K-cups that are compatible with Keurig machines.

The new Keurig machines enforce a weak form of K-cups DRM.

I didn't drink coffee until a few years ago. Starting off with K-Cups, I now alternate between AeroPress and french press. Using freshly ground beans, there's really no comparison in the taste. People say K-Cups are easier, but it's more like a different drink altogether.

I'm a big fan of the aeropress. Tastes amazing. I think K-Cups taste like Nescafe.

The AeroPress does indeed produce fantastic espresso. If only the process didn't involve near-boiling water and plastic ...

What do you mean? The materials it is built from are FDA approved for food preparation up to 100 C.

And what it produces is very far from espresso. Unless you call your americano an espresso.

If you brew upside down and don't use a lot of water, you do end up with something pretty close to espresso (including crema).

What do you mean by brewing upside down? I stopped using my Aeropress and went back to a proper machine because I missed the crema, so I'd love to know how you got one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0t7p9L02nA That's what he's talking about, but I don't know how he gets the crema because my Aeropress cannot.

I usually only get it with really fresh beans. I normally use it for coffee though instead of espresso so if the crema is what you really enjoy an Aeropress is probably not for you.

I also brew upside down, and I do get foam. But this is the same type of foam that you get with a french press. I think the difference is that this foam is caused by heat, while a good crema is caused by the pressure. It certainly tastes and looks different.

Yeah, if you just want some quick coffee, buy a jar of Jacobs Krönung or another decent instant coffee. If you want nice coffee, you have to either do a bit of work or buy a fancy machine that grinds beans and everything. At least in Europe, you can get those for under $400.

My coffee story is nearly the same. K-cups about a decade ago, but I sold that thing after 6 months because the coffee tasted like crap. Moved to an Aeropress because it makes amazing coffee. I just recently bought a Bonavida drip machine that makes Aeropress quality coffee, but with far less fuss. And it's easier to make multiple cups.

Landfills, consumer recycling, composting, etc. are a dangerous distraction.

We have hundreds to thousands of years to solve those problems before they are any serious threat to our way of life and that of most other living things on this planet.

We have no time left to solve global warming which is an immediate and critical threat to human civilization and potentially most life on Earth.

Given the public's astonishing lack of attention to the environment, and the abject failure of our global leadership to care for us on on that front, we cannot afford to waste any of the limited attention on non-critical problems like landfills.

The problems of waste management and global warming are closely interrelated though.

First and foremost the more stuff goes into landfills, the more raw materials have to be mined and processed to replace it, which consumes a lot of energy and by that increases the greenhouse gases footprint. The main point of recycling is to avoid the greenhouse gases emissions that are associated with producing products from raw materials.

A secondary problem with landfills is, especially if large amounts of compostable material go into them, that the biological degradation there happens mostly anaerobic, which in turn means it produces lots and lots of methane, which is a far more potent greenhouse gas.

In a properly setup composting facility, be it small scale in your backyard, or industrial large scale the degradation happens aerobic, so that no methane is produced.

> we cannot afford to waste any of the limited attention on non-critical problems like landfills.

As an environmental, this type of attitude is one of the things that concerns me most about the alarmist attitude on climate change.

Climate change is an important problem we need to solve. It is not, however, the only problem.

Nespresso coffee pods are recyclable. Our Magnapower eddy sorter has separated aluminum from plastic after crushing the pods. Video here: https://vimeo.com/118085045

I don't think K-Kups would present much a problem either, but I haven't had the chance to try shredding and sorting them yet.

This is actually really cool!

Do many/most/any municipal recycling facilities have ECS sorters? Should I tell people to throw K-cups in the recycling? I'm assuming the coffee grounds need to be removed first?

Most have them. I dont see the harm in putting them in the recycling bin though thats not to say they wont end up in the landfill fraction for various reasons.

The bigger issue with the DRM is that Keurig is fighting their own customers. Great for competitors, not for Keurig. "never Fight Your Own Customers" http://blog.atomicinc.com/2014/12/15/never-fight-your-custom...

San Francisco Bay Coffee sells biodegradable K-cups (they call them OneCups). They're also cheaper than the official K-cups. The only catch is that they don't work on the new Keurig 2.0 DRMed brewers.

It seems as though it's pretty easy to bypass the Keurig 2.0 DRM system:

http://www.keurighack.com/

(not tried it myself - i'm not a K-cup user)

Except it looks like OneCups are now including the "Freedom Clip" with each box: https://www.gourmet-coffee.com/Keurig-DRM-Freedom-Clip.html

Couldn't Keurig sue them for selling that?

Seems like the most ridiculous DMCA issue yet.

IANAL, but I would think the Sega v. Accolade case [0] would make this legal (unless the DMCA applies, but I don't think it would here, due to the more physical nature of the product).

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Enterprises_Ltd._v._Accol....

HN breaks that link — the trailing period is part of the URL. The path is “/wiki/Sega_Enterprises_Ltd._v._Accolade,_Inc.”

FYI, that's a 404 link to Wikipedia. You're missing a period at the end:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Enterprises_Ltd._v._Accolade,_Inc.

Perhaps it's just HN screwing up the autolinking

They did, and lost.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/12/19/free...

I might have missed it, but that seems to clarify how they beat Keurig's lawsuit re: the cups themselves, but not the Freedom Clip.

Keurig does not appear to have any intellectual property claims to the ink used. At least not yet.

Yeah, these are awesome. Our Costco sells them.

My work burns through K-Cups, but we also have a 100% no-landfill corporate policy. Everything gets recycled, or if it's not recyclable, is processed by a waste processing company and turned into feed for local incinerators.

Where possible, even "plastic" items like forks and spoons in the cafeteria are made out of recyclable materials.

But the K-Cups won't die. They're everywhere. They must make up a significant fraction of our incinerated trash every week.

So, instead of burying the carbon (or just not incentivizing its production), your company burns the plastic into the atmosphere?

Is the little bit of carbon in the plastic anywhere close to the biggest issue here? Lookup up the carbon offset price gives me under $20 per ton.

What is the bigger issue? I did imply that not purchasing the carbon (and therefore, not incentivizing its extraction) would be better than burning it (and whatever other pollutants are created by the combustion of K-cups, or equivalent) into the atmosphere.

My lungs don't really care about your 'carbon offset price' denominated in US dollars.

Your lungs don't care about carbon either. When I hear about things getting incinerated I worry about all the potential toxic chemicals, and what is done with the residue. Producing carbon dioxide and water is the ideal outcome.

I bring up the carbon price because they could pay next to nothing and leave the atmosphere with less carbon in it. That's not the hard part. The hard part is making sure we're not spilling ugly chemicals all over the environment, whether that's though burial or burning.

Yeah, it seems weird considering all the rest of the focus on other environmental friendly policies.

Trash incinerators run under strict scrubbing regulations.

This is the most overwrought controversy ever.

How many people go to Starbucks, the gas station, McDonald's or any other store and buy a cup of any beverage? How many wax cups get recycled? How many compressed polystyrene cups for soda?

If you feel particularly guilty, you can trivially tear off the foil top, empty the coffee and filter into your compost, and recycle the cup. Total waste is a few grams of foil.

I don't understand why people still use K-Cups at home. It literally takes two minutes to make a great cup of coffee with an Aeropress, one that's cheaper, tastes better, and produces far less waste.

It's boring, if you have kids it's hard to stand still and do nothing for two minutes you're trying to get them out the door, it requires several minutes of waiting for your hot water kettle, it's yet another thing to clean which people don't like, some people like variety every day and wouldn't go through beans quick enough before they went bad. There are tons of reasons (though personally I'd use an aeropress if I drank coffee at home too)

It gets you a decent cup of coffee on-demand with no cleanup and obviates concerns about how freshly roasted or freshly ground your beans are. You can zombie through using a capsule.

> But he was drinking 30 to 40 cups a day. He had to drink that much because, intent on starting his own business

I wonder if this means, drinking the cup fully, or only sampling a bit of the coffee from each cup. I don't think someone could survive drinking 30-40 cups of coffee a day, every day.

I find EZ-Cup the best solution, I use a little paper filter that fits in a reusable cup, and I get to use fresh ground coffee. Cost per cup is around a dime or so, and the cleanup is literally just pop the filter into the compost bucket. It may not be as good as an AeroPress, though I can't tell the difference. I find the fresh beans, quality coffee, and a good grinder are far more noticeable to me than press vs. drip.

At that point, how s it different from a Senseo?

As a matter of fact, why would you want a Keurig over a Senseo if all you're ever going to make is plain coffee?

Well, Canada doesn't have Senseo, but why would I use a Senseo over my Keurig. I really like the reusable cup design of the EZCup, and there isn't any cleanup. I'm guessing the Senseo by looks of the cups are similar to the Tassimo design we have here, but the pucks aren't nearly as clean and neat. I brought one in to the office, and you don't need to be near a sink, so it's really handy. Converted a Starbucks, Tim Hortons, and a French Press user, and now they're all using it. The AeroPress user, she hasn't converted, though she hasn't even tried it.

No, Senseo consumables are biodegradable. There's no cup at all, just coffee grounds wrapped in a paper filter. There's also reusable filters equivalent to EZ-cup.

I guess it does drip a little if you're not careful, which was less of an issue with the cup machines I tried.

Anyone know how Keurig stands up to Senseo[1]? Those have pads that were biodegradable from the beginning. Also pads available from third parties, which is already validated by courts.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senseo

I recently switched over to making cold brew coffee at home. It's incredibly easy to make a week's worth at time, tastes great, and just as convenient as instant coffee.

Category 7 plastic means 'other', please stop referring to it as if the mix used in K-cups is the only kind.

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