Keurig CEO Blames Coffee Pod DRM for Falling Sales

TL;DR: Twitter was an open ecosystem with lots of partners and a thriving developer environment. They chose to stop all of that, end their developer relations, and ensure that Twitter Inc was the only way that anyone could Twitter. Now, that closed-off-ecosystem is making growth difficult.

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Coffee companies are well aware of the problem. The second brewing system Keurig introduced, the Vue system, tried to address the issue of recyclability in what the company called "an incremental step on our environmental journey." The system doesn't work with the original K-Cup packs, which are made from number seven plastic, a blended plastic that's nearly impossible to recycle. Instead, the Vue capsules use a plastic cup made from polypropylene, number five plastic, and users can peel the foil lid and filter away from the cup.

The cups are then recyclable — in theory. The problem is the cups are too small to be captured in most recycling facilities where machinery separates objects by size and density, said Mark Oldfield, assistant director of public affairs for California's Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery. Most facilities filter out items under two-inches in diameter. In any case, number five plastic is rarely recycled in California, Oldfield said. "It's very difficult to deal with something like that," he added. "It's something where convenience is trumping our typical mantra of reducing and recycling."

Introducing waste for activities that happen as frequently as coffee drinking is why it's different.

It's like a company forcing me to use mayo sachets at home, rather than buying a bottle, because it makes them more money. That's not convenience, that's profiteering at the expense of the environment and the consumer.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/waste-the-dark-side-of...

And actually, I do think that people who consume heavily packaged foods all the time are being needlessly wasteful and should feel bad about it. Do you not see the fallacy in your argument, of replying to a complaint about people who generate this sort of waste on a regular basis with questions about whether the other poster ever does anything wasteful? Of course s/he does, we all do. But there's a huge difference between occasional and systematic inefficiency.

And yes I get take-out, etc...which is usually not recyclable. Atleast with this 'solution', it is one more instance where I can be active about limiting my trash.

Even people who take time to consider the possibility of attempting to spend ethically are faced with the discouraging reality that 1) they'll still end up accidentally spending a lot of money with unethical companies, since even with a great investment of time their information will only be slightly better than someone who takes no notice of these things, and 2) it will have no effect anyway unless a bunch of other people do it too, meaning tons of lost time and likely a great deal of lost money to accomplish nothing at all. Even with a publicity effort for an organized boycott (more time, more money, spent by someone) you're still just hoping that enough people will make bad individual decisions so that the decisions become good ones (i.e. they do more than just harming the people making them).

Most people don't even get that far. With everything else going on, "think seriously about how to spend in such a way as to maybe (but probably not) affect corporate behavior so that it becomes more ethical" drops down the priority list... and down... and right off the bottom. Doesn't mean their spending reflects actual support for corporate douchbaggery, though.

Hmmm, that's a great standard to test UX against.

You can with a laser printer and toner. Inkjet printers are still hugely profitable though.

>you can't shave without razor blades

You can buy a lifetime's supply of safety razor blades for the price of a modern kit. Razors are still hugely profitable.