Sustainability Activity

 


Personal Research

Ross Pila

Besides Keurig brand, what other single-cup products or systems are on the market? How are they similar or different?

The top 5 competitors of the Keurig brand are:

  1. Bunn
  2. Nespresso
  3. SeattleCoffeegear
  4. Cowgirls Espresso
  5. Cafe Stella’s Coffee

(https://www.owler.com/company/keurig)

The top competitor, Bunn, makes a coffee maker that is very similar to that Keurig makes. However, they recently brought to the market a line of coffee makers that they claim to make the quickest cup of coffee out of all coffee makers on the market. “The BUNN Speed Brew 10-cup coffee maker uses a commercial grade stainless steel internal hot water tank that keeps 70oz of water always hot so you can quickly brew at the flip of a lid.” This quote was taken from their own website, https://retail.bunn.com/speed-brew-family. However, they also sell other coffee accessories, such as old-fashioned coffee makers. They are a very similar company, which causes competition due to the fact that the same K-cups can be used for these machines.

Taking a look at another top competitor, Nespresso, I noticed something that sets them apart from Keurig. Aside from coffee makers, as many of the options on the market are very similar, Nespresso says sustainability is one of their core values. Taken from their website, they say, “Sustainability is a core value that you uphold every time you drink Nespresso. Cup by cup, you’re helping us recycle aluminum, sustainably produce coffee, and protect the environment.” They also explain their plan, and the progress they have made thus far. “Our goal: Plant much needed shade trees on small, independent coffee farms in La Giorgia, Costa Rica. Planting shade trees not only helps protect the eco-system for coffee plants to grow and thrive, but they have other positive environmental impacts. In the summer of 2019, in partnership with PUR Projet, Nespresso USA began our first wave of planting shade seedlings in the La Giorgia region of Costa Rica.”  (https://www.nespresso.com/us/en/sustainability) Whether the difference they will make is vast or minor, this value may resonate with consumers causing them to choose Nespresso over Keurig.

What trends have there been in Americans’ coffee (or morning beverage) routine?

2019 Coffee Consumer Trends

Past-Day Coffee Consumption

  • The number of people who reported drinking coffee within the past day was 63 percent, a modest 1 point down from last year, and a 6 percent increase from the 57 percent mark in 2016.
  • Older people (60+) reported the strongest past-day consumption (72 percent), while younger people reported the least (47 percent for 18-24-year-olds).
  • No significant U.S. regional differences were observed in past-day consumption totals.

Where Coffee is Prepared

  • 78 percent of people who said they drank coffee yesterday prepared it in-home. In 2012, that number was 84 percent.
  • The percentage of people who reported drinking coffee made outside the home — i.e. in a coffee shop — within the past day dropped one point from last year to 35 percent. That number was 40 percent in 2017, and 30 percent in 2012.

Gourmet Coffee and Espresso-Based Beverages

Some definitions may be in order here. The NCA maintains a category for Traditional Coffee – Not Gourmet, which is defined simply as traditional coffee “not brewed from premium whole bean or ground varieties.”

Traditional Coffee – Gourmet is brewed from “premium varieties,” while another category, Gourmet Coffee Beverages, includes brewed gourmet, espresso-based beverages, and non-espresso-based beverages such as blended drinks or cold brew.

  • Gourmet Coffee Beverages for the first time reached a 60 percent or more share over non-gourmet among past-day drinkers, at 61/40.
  • Past-day consumption of espresso-based beverages has remained at an all-time high of 24 percent in each of the past three years.
  • Past-day consumption of traditional coffee (gourmet) was down one point from last year to 15 percent.
  • Traditional coffee (gourmet) has seen a 7 percent reduction in past-day consumption since 2012, while espresso-based-beverage past-day consumption has risen 10 percent in that same period.
  • Among all ethnicities included in the NCDT (African-American, Asian-American, Caucasian-American and Hispanic-American), African-Americans reported the most dramatic changes this year, with past-day consumption of gourmet coffee beverages jumping from 33 percent in 2018 up to 40 percent in 2019.

 

https://dailycoffeenews.com/2019/03/11/2019-coffee-and-beverage-trends-inside-the-ncas-annual-report/

 


Ivan Kostovski

What is the current state of recycling technology?

It’s garbage.

For the past 30 years, Americans have been sending their trash and “recyclables” to China. This was due to a boom in the Chinese economy and a dire need for materials to supply its growing factories. After the beginning of the 1990’s many trash businesses promised recycling plans for counties all over the country, which boosted moral and incentive for Americans to start recycling. In the end, these companies would send thousands of tons of landfill to China, where about 30% (1)(2) of trash would be contaminated with non-recyclable plastics and end up sitting around the “recycling villages” polluting the soil and air as they release methane and other chemicals, or be dumped in the Chinese seas. 

In 2018, this stopped. China’s National Sword act reduced foreign imports to only 0.5%. Before this act passed, China was sucking up 50+% of the world’s garbage and recyclables.  

The Chinese middle class is rising, and they can’t keep up with their own filth as it is. The workers in these “recycling villages” cleaned and sorted trash for the past 30 years mostly by manual labor. The act was a way of tackling the pollution they caused and securing a better recycling industry for their workers. (1)

Why is this important?

Because the United States’s recycling technologies have stagnated for 3 decades and are equipped to deal with 21st century consumerism and product designs. (2) Right after, the Chinese ceased imports countless counties and entire states have shut down their recycling facilities and operations due to a loss of profit. A ton of recyclable material is worth but a fraction of what it was just 5 years ago, and in most cases, it actually costs the local governments to attempt to recycle domestically because of the lack of an active market. (2) There are domestic facilities that use AI and mechanical labor, but even they are hitting a limit with just how much efficiency and accuracy the machines can separate plastics.(3) So far, the recycling market was fueled by the hard manual labor of Chinese workers, now brought to a halt, has created a panic because of the reality that such a market would not prosper in the United States where the labor would cost exponentially more. Environmental advocacy groups have long complained for companies to take up matter in their own hands and manufacture products from decomposable and easily recyclable materials; shockingly, without monetary incentive, that hasn’t worked. (1)

On the other side of the pond, the EU has had legislation incentivizing the use of cleaner plastics and glass and regulations against the opposite. (2) The legislation is proving to be the most efficient way of creating easily recyclable landfills and increasing recycling education. Laws have been passed on local and state levels from West to East here at home, and they’re proving to ease the job a bit on the trash businesses that take care of their localities. Paper and glass are proving to create profitable markets, but only at the fraction of what we as a global community need to be to seriously address pollution and global warming. 

 

  1. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/china-has-stopped-accepting-our-trash/584131/
  2. https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2019-4-july-august/feature/us-recycling-system-garbage
  3. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/climate/recycling-landfills-plastic-papers.html

 


Christian Baker

Starbucks & Disposable Cups

  • Starbucks supposedly started on their sustainability action by removing all of their straws and incorporating their “new strawless lid”
    • Claimed to have removed all straws from their business model by 2020
  • it is estimated that each year, 2.5 billion million disposable cups are thrown away in the UK, around 4 billion in the U.S. through Starbucks alone, and 2.8 billion in Germany.”
  • The disposable cup is the easy factor in the whole equation to immediately point blame to when it’s really only half the problem
    • It’s only the part that most of the public might see in our waste bins or on the street next to the neighborhood coffee shops
  • In efforts from the UK, there was the proposal of a “latte levy”(3) which essentially put a tax on companies usage of disposable cups in their establishments
    • This effort was however declined because the government felt “enough was already being done by the industry to begin to tackle the issue.”
  • There are smaller efforts that companies can make on their parts by offering discounts to those who bring in their own reusable cups
  • Ultimately it’s reported that consumers don’t use more reusable cups because they aren’t as convenient to carry around and have on their person

Coffee Circle

  • In total, the worldwide impact that coffee waste has per year is 23 million pounds with one of the larger factors being the pressed coffee grounds that people throw away
  • The primary goal that the coffee industry and consumers should be striving to achieve is the circular economy
    • Has been introduced before but is being reinforced by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation
    • Need people to move way from our mostly linear form of economics where we use a product and then it simply goes to waste when it doesn’t have to be
  • Ground to Ground is an Australian organization that has collaborated hundreds of cafes in the circular economy
    • involve them in the effort of giving away their used coffee grounds for free to customers who want them
    • Meanwhile hey educate and inform people on the uses and capabilities that used grounds can have on our daily lives
      • “such as compost, de-icing material, hair dye and skin exfoliator, among others”
  • China is having difficulties managing its own environmental impact and waste so Zhu Dajian”, director of the Institute of Governance for Sustainable Development at Tongji University in Shanghai,” is a force in the Chinese economy that is heavily enforcing the need of the circular economy if any real change is to be made
    • Claims that not only would this help in depleting the waste landfills but also create more jobs in the recycling process for the grounds
    • Draws inspiration from “industrial ecology”, which is similar to the natural ecosystem process
  • Bio-bean is a London based company that picks up used coffee grounds and “convert them into biofuels”
    • “Bio-bean is the first company in the world to industrialize this process, and recently opened a 20,000-square-foot factory in north London capable of processing 50,000 metric tons (about 55,000 tons) of used coffee grounds per year”
    • In the event that these efforts are successful, they talked about reselling these fuels back to the shops, which would “create a true circular economy”
      • The converted used coffee grounds would be sent back as fuel components to then cook the next round of grounds and loop the cycle back fully
    • The company recently partnered with the train stations in the UK where they would be collecting the coffee waste in the six biggest stations
  • Ultimately the circular economy isn’t going to be promoted because of just it’s good deeds impact it would have, but it is estimated that this system would save over a trillion dollars a year in material costs

 

  1. https://dailycoffeenews.com/2018/07/19/more-than-cups-considering-sustainability-in-the-coffee-shop-industry/
  2. https://dailycoffeenews.com/2018/10/09/what-goes-around-how-coffee-waste-is-fueling-a-circular-economy/
  3. https://dailycoffeenews.com/2018/01/05/uk-legislators-propose-latte-levy-on-paper-coffee-cups/
  4. https://www.keurig.com/recyclable

 


Jack Robinson

What is Keurig’s current stance on the recyclability of K-cups?

  • “Drink Well, Do Good” initiative started by Keurig
  • 100% of K-cups in Canada are recyclable 
  • Goal is to have 100% of US K-cups to be recyclable by end of 2020
  • The pods are now being made of polypropylene #5

https://people.com/food/keurig-founder-k-cups-not-recyclable/

 

  • Keurig is trying to have zero waste in landfills by 2025
  • Use only 100% of renewable energy by 2025

https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/08/09/can-keurig-dr-pepper-make-an-ecofriendly-k-cup.aspx

How does the price of operating a Keurig compared to a regular machine?

  • The average cost of a K-cup is $.30 to $1, and one cup produces about 5 oz of coffee. That means it should take about two K-cups to fill the average travel size mug.
  • Using ground coffee saves about 2-4x more money than using K-Cups
    • Leads to up to $600 of savings per year

https://www.smartfamilymoney.com/cost-of-k-cup-vs-drip-coffee/

 


James Knotter

What prevents K-Cups from being recyclable now?

  • It’s difficult to separate the coffee grounds from the plastic container
  • The container needs to be manually opened to get the coffee grounds out
  • K-Cups are small relative to other recyclables, making them difficult to pick out of lots of garbage and recyclables
  • All the above reasons make K-Cups time consuming to recycle which slows down the recycling process for an entire plant.
  • These reasons, combined with the fact that k-cups are made with a relatively small
    amount of plastic makes them quite expensive to recycle.

    • Recycling companies sell the plastic they get from recyclables, since each K-Cup is made of so little material relative to other recyclables and it’s expensive and time consuming to sort, manually open, and wash them, they aren’t profitable for recycling companies to recycle.

What makes recyclable K-Cups recyclable?

  • Recyclable K-Cups are made of polypropylene (plastic number five) which is easier for recycling facilities to sort and recycle.
  • Recyclable K-Cups can be shredded into tiny pieces of plastic which are significantly less difficult for recycling plants to process
    • They also allow for larger profit margins considering they don’t bog down the process of recycling other products and the plastic itself is more valuable
  • However the recyclable K-Cups are only recyclable when the consumer washes out all  the coffee grounds from it before tossing it and are still made of plastic of course
  1. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/03/13/heres-why-your-used-k-cups-coffee-pods-arent-usually-recycled/3067283002/
  2. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/business/energy-environment/keurigs-new-k-cup-coffee-is-recyclable-but-hardly-green.html

 


Daniel O’Rourke

What’s involved in recycling

  • Relevant Stakeholders:  People who recycle, government, people who collect, businesses that recycle, people who clean the material for reuse, churches, environmental groups,
  • Relevant Artifacts: different types of plastic, paper, glass cardboard, aluminum, steel cans,
  • Relevant Systems/ Processes: Collection, decontaminating, remanufacturing, Cleaning. 3 types of recycling: Primary, Secondary Tertiary.  Repurposing of materials.

 What’s involved in the Keurig

  • Relevant Stakeholders for Keurig: Customers, College Students, Faculty, Keurig Company, Stores,
  • Relevant Artifacts for Keurig: K-cup, Mug/Other things to drink out of, Coffee ground/ beans, Keurig Brewer,  Water, Electricity/Power,
  • Relevant Systems/ Processes: Water gets heated, energy needed to heat water, filtering of coffee, Brewer punctures k-cup, fill up with water,  insert k-cup, buying k-cups, water pressurized, lid technology( where the K-cup goes, keeps everything pressurized). Filter in K-cup.

 Brainstorming

  • Recyclable k-cup,  make k-cup out of materials that have already been recycled. Keurig takes used k-cups and repurposes them. solar panel/ batteries to make the Keurig more energy efficient. AeroPress Coffee Machine.  Made from glass instead of plastic. For AeroPress tackle making it easy to clean. Different attachments for different styles of coffee? Mesh filter that is reusable. Eliminate the K-Cup in general, remake the process so that one can put coffee grounds into chamber directly.
  • Use material for K-cup that is tasteless, consumable, add an attachment to remove the foil. Have K-cups wrapped in biodegradable material. Product allows for K-cups that are better for environment and don’t require too much of a change to the process of using the Keurig.

 


 

Video for potential Product:


 

Sketches and Ideation: