My office has a big bin for recycling coffee pods (van houtte, keurig…) wondering how they get recycled? Thanks
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The best thing I did was get 5 reusable pods along with ground beans. Exponentially cheaper. Plus you can premake them at night and set them next to your keurig.
And yes I’m well aware that an actually coffee machine would be way easier, but a decade ago I fell for the hype of keurigs haha.
They don’t.
In order to properly recycle a k-cup, the plastic needs to be separated from the other material. You’re supposed to be able to peel the lid off and discard it, peel the coffee pouch off and compost it, and recycle the remaining hard plastic.
I have never seen a k-cup that didn’t tear, explode, and send coffee grinds everywhere when trying to separate the bag from the cup. Some brands may be better than others.
Coffee grinds would be an unacceptable contaminant in the recycled plastic. And since it would only take one or two kcups of grinds to contaminate a whole bin and it’s too laborious to sort through them, they’re not getting recycled. They probably get brought to the recycling plant, and a worker there has to notice and say “That bag is k-cups. Toss it in the trash.”
The same thing happens for plastic wrapping, grocery bags etc. Many recycling plants don’t have equipment for managing thin film plastic. It doesn’t crush well and it tangles up equipment, and they tend to be full of contaminants like cardboard, labels, paper, inks/dyes, etc. They cost more to process than they can be sold for. Not only that, but the bags are contaminating otherwise good recyclable material.
So the local recycling facility has to release a statement “No plastic bags in the recycle”. Then deal with the backlash from the public “Why isn’t our plastic waste recyclable?” while petrochem pushes the agenda that “It’s the recycling company’s job to recycle plastic.” What eventually happens is the recycling company takes so much flak and pressure that they change the statement to “Plastic bag recycling must be in a clear bag separate from the rest of recyclable materials.” Why? So when it gets to the plant it can be thrown in the garbage easily.
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