Are K-Cups Bad For You And The Environment?

Coffee pods are a multi-billion dollar industry, making up a third of all coffee sold in the U.S. Sixteen million households currently have a single-serve coffee machine on their countertop. That’s a lot of pods, plastic, and aluminum. Frankly, it’s a lot of garbage. 

At that scale, it’s impossible not to wonder about the health and environmental implications of our addiction to convenience coffee. How concerned should we be? 

That’s what we set out to investigate in this rigorously researched article. Steering clear of wild online claims and brand propaganda, we stuck to peer-reviewed science to bring you the whole truth and nothing but.

The Major Issues With K-Cups

Using a Keurig coffee maker isn’t entirely negative. They use less power, water, and coffee than regular drip coffee machines. But are these savings enough to offset the major issue of coffee pod waste? Let’s see.

The Life Cycle of a Coffee Pod

K Cups are made using materials not present in the classic coffee life cycle, including plastic, aluminum, and paper. These materials must be gathered, processed, and manufactured into empty little cups.

Coffee is then distributed amongst many of these plastic/aluminum cups, which are packaged again into larger boxes before being placed on pallets and distributed. 

The pods are purchased by well-meaning consumers, and each is used in a Keurig compatible machine to make one cup of coffee.

Once used, some pods can be picked apart, and elements can be recycled or composted. But the work is time-consuming and undermines the convenience of pod brewing. Most capsules end up chucked into the garbage.

What About Biodegradable Or Recyclable K Cups?

In response to pressure from consumers and environmental groups, Keurig Green Mountain Coffee famously promised that all their K Cups would be recyclable by the end of 2020 – a noteworthy statement given that they manufacture around 10 billion of these tiny plastic cups annually (1). 

Keurig claims they delivered on that promise by switching from non-recyclable Plastic #7 to recyclable Plastic #5 (2). But the reality looks a little different.

Many depots still don’t accept K Cups, so many that Keurig Canada was recently fined $3 million for making false claims and will be required to update its advertising and labeling (3). The plain truth is that most end up in landfills.

How Long Does it Take for a K-Cup To Decompose?

The specific time it takes for plastic coffee pods to break down is unknown, as they’ve only been on the scene for a few decades. But we know plenty about the biodegradability of their materials.

Soft plastics like grocery bags endure in a landfill for about 20 years, while harder plastics like water bottles last up to 500 years (4). Aluminum operates on a similar timescale, biodegrading over the course of 200 to 500 years (5). In short, your trashed K-Cup pods aren’t going anywhere for centuries.

Are Coffee Pods Bad For Your Health?

Plenty of online articles warn of the effects on your health of using K cups, mostly due to hot water leaching aluminum or plastic chemicals into your coffee. But how many of these sources are reliable versus just headline writers hoping for clicks?

The good news for Keurig K Cup fans is that few of these claims are backed by scientific research. Let’s avoid hyperbole and look at the science.

Estrogenic Effects

The most recent upheaval surrounds the potential estrogenic effects of coffee capsules. It stems from a 2020 study in the journal Toxicology Reports with the decidedly non-clickbait title of “Evaluation of estrogenic chemicals in capsule and French press coffee using ultra-performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (6).”

Researchers investigated exposure to estrogenic chemicals (ECs) from capsule coffee using French press coffee as a control. Five ECs were detected in capsule coffee, two of which were also found in French press coffee. The paper concluded, “However, the level of exposure to these ECs from coffee is minimal and the potential risk to health is likely to be low relative to established safety guidelines.” As with most things in life, moderation is key – which is not a very exciting headline.

Other Plastic Concerns

Do K-Cups cause cancer? This is a reasonable question. The combination of hot water and plastic always raises concerns about leaching chemicals. But after an exhaustive search of the scientific literature, I couldn’t find a single paper linking cancer with plastic in the K-Cups.

Originally, plastic K-Cups were made with a proprietary 4-layer Plastic #7 that we knew little about beyond Keurig’s assertion that their K-Cups are BPA-free. The current generation of cups is made from polypropylene, widely considered the safest plastic material (7). 

If you are concerned about carcinogenic chemicals in coffee, you’ll benefit more by switching to organic coffee and avoiding instant coffee than ditching plastics.

What About Aluminum?

Keurig K-Cups have an aluminum lid, and you can easily find scary health stories about aluminum, particularly regarding its link to Alzheimer’s. But once again, the hard science paints a milder picture. 

Some studies do show a link between aluminum and Alzheimer’s – after all, aluminum is a known neurotoxin. However, the results are inconsistent, and none have proven a causal link. A large Canadian study looked at the impacts of aluminum in drinking water and concluded, “Exposure to aluminum in drinking water was not clearly associated with increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease (8).”

But, more importantly, does any aluminum from the pod lid actually leach into the coffee?

To find out, I turned to a 2021 study on aluminum cookware (9). In that research, water was boiled in an aluminum pot for an hour, resulting in an aluminum concentration of 0.303 mg/L. Compare that with about 1 minute to extract a K-Cup using water below the boiling point.

What does 0.303 mg/L mean? Should we be scared? The average antacid tablet has 150 mg of aluminum. Aspirin has about 15 mg (10). In Canada, drinking water can have up to 0.29 mg/L (11). 

It’s wise to be wary if you have a family history of Alzheimer’s and prefer to avoid aluminum, especially if you drink multiple cups of coffee a day. But if you love drinking K-Cups, you don’t need to fear for your brain health – especially since coffee has been linked with the prevention of Alzheimer’s (12)!

The Greater Effect: How Are K-Cups Bad for the Environment?

Let’s take a closer look at K-Cups from an environmental health perspective. The truth is that plastic pods are an environmental disaster unfolding right before our eyes, and our personal health is inextricably linked to that of our surroundings.

Filling Landfills

As we saw earlier, it takes centuries for plastic and aluminum to break down. And, sadly, Keurig coffee pods may not be accepted for recycling everywhere, despite Keurig’s claims to the contrary. That means K-Cups made from these materials are piling up in landfills to the tune of about 10 billion each year (13).

Can You Really Not Recycle These Things?

Despite improvements, many Keurig pods remain difficult or impossible to recycle. You can’t just stick them in your bin without doing your research. Contact your local recycling depot to find out what they accept. 

Even if you can recycle coffee pods in your area, the process is still not simple. First, you need to separate the foil top from the plastic and clean them out. This procedure is a hard sell for anyone buying Keurig cups for convenience, which is most Keurig users. 

There are challenges at the depot, too, with reports of sifters failing to catch the little plastic cups when they’re processed. These sorts of problems are why only 9% of plastics, 34% of metals, and 67% of paper from municipal waste were properly recycled in 2015 (14).

The Environmental Impact of Recycling Aluminum

Recycling makes the best of a bad situation, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Recycling heavy metals like aluminum requires significant fossil fuel inputs and comes with its own set of problems (15).

Melting aluminum for reuse creates a side product called “salt cake” (sounds more delicious than it is), which is highly toxic to all living organisms. It also leads to significant air pollution from furans, dioxides, hydrogen chloride, and particulate matter.

“Kill the K-Cup” Goes Viral

It was in January 2015 that the unsustainability of K cups hit the mainstream (16). An initially anonymous video (later claimed to be made by Egg Studios) hit the web called “Kill the K-Cup.” It was soon accompanied by the popular #KillTheKCup hashtag.

Filmed in a very Cloverfield-esque fashion, the satirical short video envisions K cups as invaders of the strangest sort…

Pretty great way to draw attention to an issue, right?

Is There An Environmentally Friendly K-Cup Alternative?

The search for environmentally friendly K-cup coffee pods is nothing new, but it has gained traction in recent years. Recyclable and compostable single-serve coffee pods are becoming more readily available. 

Of course, the best solution is to wean yourself off K-Cup coffee altogether. You’ll not only do the planet a favor, but you’ll enjoy tastier brewed coffee. A wonderful win-win!

But for now, let’s take a look at a couple of options for limiting your environmental footprint. Remember that these Keurig alternatives are not necessarily going to yield the same level of convenience. But it’s a small price to pay for the well-being of our planet and, ultimately, ourselves.

Alternative #1: Find Better Pods

Look for compostable brands. New ones are popping up all the time. For example, North American brands Purpods and G-Pak have been certified 100% compostable and decompose in a matter of weeks. Other great options include OneCoffee and Uncommon Coffee Roasters.

While the resources used to produce these pods are still high, their use has less long-term environmental impact. It can even add value by enhancing your compost and garden. Compostable options can be pricier and go stale faster, so plan to buy only as much as you’ll drink in a few weeks.

Alternative #2: Reusable Pods

The best way to reduce the number of pods you use without ditching your Keurig machine is to drop that number to one. Reusable pods like the EZ-Cup or My K-Cup are only slightly more work-intensive.

Refillable pods have obvious environmental advantages. But they have flavor and financial benefits, too! 

Buying whole bean coffee is much cheaper than pre-packaged pods, and you’ll have more brands of coffee and specialty coffee beans to choose from. You can use a higher coffee dose and grind it fresh for maximum flavor.

Coffee Pods… We Say No.

Coffee pods undeniably damage our planet and may pose health risks for you. As the popularity of single serve coffee makers skyrockets, these consequences are only getting more severe.

The truth is that you don’t need to use K Cups to enjoy high quality coffee. In fact, I guarantee you can find an alternative way to make coffee that suits your lifestyle and delivers a far superior morning cup.

The coffee pod issue is something that we need to keep a laser focus on as we collectively work toward a solution. Please consider commenting with your thoughts and even sharing the post. Knowledge is power!