Are Coffee Pods as Bad for the Environment as You Think?
By Katlyn Nohr
In an effort to appeal to the modern consumer, companies are creating an increasing number of single-use products. These products may be more convenient, but consumers counter the convenience with concerns about the environmental impact of unnecessary plastic waste. One such conscious consumer is Professor Andrea Hicks of the civil and environmental engineering department at UW-Madison. Hicks’ research looks into the popular alternative to the conventional method of brewing whole pots of coffee: the single-cup coffee pods.
In order to better understand the true environmental effects of these coffee pods, Hicks took up a life cycle assessment of the product as a side project. With the current pervasive negative view of any sort of single-use product, especially coffee pods, Hicks expected the worst. The results of the assessment, however, were surprisingly optimistic. When comparing the environmental impact of single-serve coffee pods to the conventional whole-pot brewing method, “it’s actually about the same, depending on the environmental impact category… we’re talking about a marginal difference,” Hicks says.
Hicks obtained these results from a holistic assessment of a cup of coffee. This assessment looks into the cultivation of the beans, the use in coffee, and the eventual disposal of the pods — “very much a cradle to grave approach,” according to Hicks. Between these phases, Hicks considered many factors such as ozone depletion, possibility of acidification, fossil fuel depletion, and CO2 gas emissions. Ultimately, “The biggest environmental impact to coffee is growing coffee and the energy to brew coffee,” Hicks says. When comparing single-serve coffee pods with pot brewing, the resources used for growing the beans are nearly the same, so the focus of the assessments were on the use and disposal life phases.
Perhaps the most obvious impact comes from the disposal stage of the product. For nearly all single-serve coffee pods, as with other packaging material, disposal means being sent to a landfill. Even conventional brewing is not waste-free, however, as it requires single-use coffee filters. Other alternatives for coffee brewing such as biodegradable coffee pods are in the works, but products such as these require a thorough life cycle assessment to truly understand their effects and not be blindly accepted as the most environmentally friendly option. The decomposition emissions, such as CO2 and methane gas, from these biodegradable pods can have just as much environmental impact as plastic cups in a landfill. While the plastics in coffee cups are technically recyclable, the amount that is recoverable and the likelihood of consumers properly cleaning and recycling them are both small. “At some point, the effort is too high to be economically or environmentally worthwhile,” Hicks says. This is a prime example of the importance of life cycle assessments to truly understand the components of a product that are not as visible or obvious as others.
An example of the ambiguous visibility of these coffee pods comes in the “use” phase of single-serve pods, which bring with them an even greater environmental impact than disposal. “Energy consumption is a huge part of it,” says Hicks, regarding the overall impact of coffee consumption. Both conventional pot brewing and single-serve brewing often require more energy than necessary. Consumers often leave full pots of coffee in the machine, leaving the heat plate on to keep the pot warm, which continuously uses energy. Other factors outside of how the consumer brews their coffee, such as where they get their energy (natural gas, solar, etc.) and where they live, can greatly influence the amount and impact of energy used to brew. As with the previous assessment, the single-serve pods do not come out much worse than conventional pot brewing.
Attempting to quantify exactly what goes into the consumption and disposal of any product diverges from strict scientific analysis, and the more subjective influence of the consumer must be taken into consideration. “There’s a human component and a technology component,” Hicks says. The purchasing, use, and eventual disposal of products all rely on the choices of the consumer. Understanding this inherent subjectivity and trying to comprehend and compensate for it is a constant consideration in life cycle assessment and any sort of product design produced by engineers.
“It’s not just the product technology and it’s not just the human behavior, it’s somewhere in the middle of what people do with it”
The rebound effect is an especially important facet of consumer behavior when considering environmental impact. According to this phenomenon, there will be a reduction in expected gains from new efficient technologies, meaning that the savings in energy expected from any new product is often not the reality due to how it is used. In the context of coffee consumption, the single-serve brewing machine should see a significant decrease in energy usage as it is only used for a short time. However, the tendency to leave the machine plugged in nearly constantly offsets much of the anticipated savings.
With novel technologies being developed daily to make everyday life more convenient and environmentally friendly, it is both the responsibility of the engineer and the consumer to consider the potential effects of their repeated choices. “It’s not just the product technology and it’s not just the human behavior, it’s somewhere in the middle of what people do with it,” Hicks says. The most seemingly efficient technology is useless in practice if it is not assessed holistically to understand all impacts so it can be used more responsibly by the consumer.
