海角大神

If they were to be taken out of landfills and lined up side by side,聽the K-Cups sold In 2014 alone聽would wrap around the world 10.5 times.聽

While a huge marketing success in millions of offices and homes, Keurig has as of yet聽failed to develop a way to effectively recycle the plastic K-Cups, according to a report from The Atlantic.

Keurig was sold to Green Mountain Coffee of Vermont in 2006, and last year sales of the coffee pods made up most of the company's $4.7 billion revenue, which was five times the amount from just five years earlier, according to the Atlantic. Last year, the company sold more than nine billion K-Cups. Almost one in three American households has a pod-based coffee machine.聽

As of last spring, only聽five percent of K-Cups聽sold by Keurig were recyclable, according to Mother Jones. The remaining 95 percent are made with composite plastics and have the recycling number "7 blend" distinction, which cannot be processed in most recycling plants.

Part of the reason for the rise in coffee pods waste is Americans' desire for a convenient fresh-brewed cup of coffee. The clean-up does not take much effort either because the coffee drinker simply tosses the spent pod in the trash. The sale of one-cup coffee pods has exploded in the last decade to the tune of聽138,324 percent growth, according to data from Euromonitor, reports a Washington Post聽Wonkblog聽entry.聽In 2013, K-Cup sales accounted for 26 percent of all ground coffee sales in the United States, according to a story from the business-oriented聽online publication聽Quartz.

One possible solution: Since聽most Americans opt to buy pre-ground coffee anyways聽it would not take much extra effort to use聽refillable K-Cups.聽It would save consumers from continually purchasing boxes of more coffee pods, which with all of the packaging creates more waste than one bag or drum of pre-ground coffee, according to Mother Jones.

鈥淲e can get to a cup of coffee dozens of different ways,鈥� Martin Bourque, director of the聽Ecology Center, a non-profit in Berkeley, Calif., told the聽East Bay Express. 鈥淭he best way is a large volume of coffee that goes into a cup that鈥檚 washed and re-used a thousand times, and the coffee goes to compost or mushroom production. That鈥檚 best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is these pods.鈥�

K-Cup's defenders can argue that their machines use less electricity than standard percolators, that they brew the coffee more efficiently, and that K-Cup users are less likely to make too much coffee, thus saving water. But the image of a bin full of empty K-Cups remains a potent symbol of waste .聽

Keurig Green Mountain is well aware of the problem. A satirical video titled "Kill the K-Cup," uploaded to YouTube in January, already has nearly a half-million views.聽

Keurig Green Mountain has released a sustainability report early last year which states that the company has a goal to make all of the individual pods 100 percent recyclable by the year 2020. The company also plans to reduce green-house gas emissions by 25 percent from the company's 2012 levels, and to fully eliminate company waste that ends up in landfills, according to the report.

Perhaps Keurig might get to its goal of creating recyclable pods sooner if it borrowed a page from its competitors.

Nespresso, Nestle's version of the Keurig machine, features completely aluminum coffee pods and aluminum lids聽that are fully recyclable. Canterbury Coffee is a Canadian brand that has made near-bio-degradeable coffee pods 鈥� everything can decompose with the exception of the nylon filter. However, recognizing whatever future containers hold a pod's worth of ground coffee, they will have to be as environmentally-conscious as they are functional because coffee can quickly go bad if not properly packaged, according to Mother Jones.聽

Environmentally conscious customers are making choices based on caring for the planet, and companies are responding. This past week, the 海角大神 Science Monitor reported on Kentucky Fried Chicken launching an edible coffee cup聽鈥撀燼 cup-shaped wafer cookie lined with a heat-resistant white chocolate lining. And Italian coffee maker Lavazza has launched cookie espresso cups as well.