Coffee pods: why we don’t make them.

Coffee pods and the environment.

We are occasionally asked if we have any plans to produce a Dreambeans coffee pod and the answer is always that we have no plans and that we can’t foresee any circumstances that would cause this to change. Single-serve coffee pods, have become more common in recent years as an easy way to make coffee. At Dreambeans, we think of coffee pods as “the new instant coffee”. By 2025, the global market for pods and capsules is expected to be more than $29 billion.

However, using pods comes at a cost to the environment so we’re taking a look at the environmental impact of coffee pods and how they contribute to the waste and pollution that is everywhere and all around us. At Dreambeans, we try to be as sustainable as possible in everything that we do. Despite the claims many coffee pod manufacturers make, they’re not sustainable at all.

So much packaging

One of the main issues with coffee pods is the amount of packaging it takes to deliver a tiny shot of coffee. Most coffee pods are made of plastic and aluminum, and they are often individually wrapped in plastic. This results in a huge amount of packaging waste that ends up in landfills. According to a study by the German Federal Environment Agency, the packaging waste generated by coffee pods in Germany alone could fill a football field to a depth of 10 meters.

Coffee pods have an outrageously large energy consumption. Manufacturing, transporting, and disposing of coffee pods requires a significant amount of energy. Additionally, the energy consumption of the coffee machines that use these pods is also higher than traditional coffee makers. A study by the UK Energy Saving Trust found that using a coffee pod machine for a year produces around 270 kg of CO2 emissions, which is equivalent to driving a car for 1,400 miles. The city of Hamburg in Germany banned coffee pods in 2016 and there have been many calls for similar bans in other German cities and around the world.

In Ireland, most local authorities do not have facilities for recycling or composting empty coffee pods. In Ireland, Nespresso and L’Or expect consumers either to collect and keep their empty pods and post them to the company, or to drop them off at collection points or to arrange a pickup by An Post. Most consumers don’t have time for this, which means that nearly all discarded pods end up in landfills. This is a significant problem, as landfills are a major source of methane emissions, which is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change.

It is clear to see that coffee pods are a significant contributor to waste and pollution. Their packaging, energy consumption, and problems with their disposal contribute to environmental problems like landfills, greenhouse gas emissions, and deforestation. The lack of recycling and composting facilities in Ireland for coffee pods means that most of the discarded pods end up in landfills. It is important to consider the environmental impact of your actions and to find more sustainable alternatives to coffee pods.