Keurig Releases a Climate-Friendly Solution to Coffee Pod Waste

How Decarbonization Affects Even Your Cup of Morning Coffee

Disclaimer: Katherine Radeka collaborated with Roger Johnson, Chief Supply Officer of Keurig Dr Pepper, on her book High Velocity Innovation: How to Get Your Best Ideas to Market Faster but she did not have any personal engagement with the K-Round development team. This article was written with public information.

I deeply believe that almost every product we currently produce or consume will need to be decarbonized — soon! While some are actively seeking drop-in replacements for things like plastic resins and other petrochemicals, others are looking to nature for more bio-based, circular solutions.

Food products are especially vulnerable because everything we know about how to feed ourselves was developed during a time with lower CO2 concentrations and a more stable climate. Industry research shows that coffee is one of the most vulnerable crops.

Coffee Is Especially Vulnerable to Climate Change

“‘Estimates show that 30 years from now, basically 50% of coffee lands as we know them today will not be viable for coffee production anymore, if climate change isn’t tackled, Philipp Navratil, global head of Nestle’s coffee strategic business unit”, said in a December 19, 2023 article on Bloomberg News.

When you look at the carbon emissions produced by your morning cup of coffee, by far the bulk of the emissions comes from the beans themselves — at least 40%. To lower those emissions, we need to have low-carbon regenerative agriculture, packing, and shipping. A study by Sustainability Times shows that better practices can reduce up to 77% of these emissions, using technologies available to us right now.

Decarbonizing the Coffee Value Chain

Once that coffee reaches packagers and home users, the most low-carbon way to process it is to ruin it — that is, turn it into instant coffee. A meta-analysis by The Conversation compiled a set of research studies that conducted Lifecycle Analysis for four major preparation methods and found that this was the least impactful way to make a single cup of coffee.

Their studies looked at impacts along the full value chain from coffee production through packaging, transportation, energy use, and disposal.

Instant coffee’s dehydrated coffee granules have the lowest carbon emissions from shipping, packaging, and disposal. They only require the energy it takes to heat water to turn them into coffee. In some dystopian future, this might be the only alternative. But I suspect if things have gotten that far, we’ve probably already lost the coffee plantations themselves.

French press coffee was better, requiring the least packaging for the beans and only the energy required to grind them, and boil the water. The spent grounds can be composted at home.

Given the challenges of recycling single-use pods, one would think that would be the most impactful, but filter coffee was actually the worst, primarily because it requires the most coffee. It also consumes more energy, especially if the coffeemakers has a warming function. But even if you have a solar system powering the kettle and you’re pouring the water yourself, the amount of coffee still overwhelms the energy savings.

Keurig’s Dilemma: What to Do With the Pods?

Single-use coffee pods require less coffee than either French Press or filter coffeemakers to produce good coffee. They also heat a smaller amount of water than most of us do when we turn on a kettle.

But they come with the need to dispose of all those single use pods, which is a visible waste customers experience every time they brew a cup. Even if it’s not the most impactful by the numbers, it seems the most impactful because it’s so visible, when coffee production and energy use are not. Competing coffee pods claim to be more sustainable but they are also hard to recycle, requiring an inconvenient return process or commercial composting.

This is not news to Keurig; they spent a lot of time and effort developing a K-cup that could be recycled — the key word here is “could be” since many curbside recycling programs still won’t take them. They’re too small for the mechanized sorting systems that large waste management companies dump mixed waste streams into.

But Keurig didn’t stop there.

The Compostable K-Cup

This month, Keurig announced that they had produced a compostable K-cup replacement: the K-Round. This is a compressed coffee puck surrounded by a thin layer of cellulose. The coffee puck expands in the brewing process, and the final product should be completely recyclable.

In the press release announcing this new product, CEO Bob Gamgort said, "Thirty years ago, Keurig changed the way consumers brewed coffee, with the introduction of the K-Cup pod single-serve coffee system. Today, we are applying all our expertise to create a revolutionary new system that will redefine how consumers will brew coffee for decades to come."

There is one major downside: They won’t work in existing Keurig coffeemakers. That will drive the need to purchase new coffeemakers, when the ones already out in the field still have a lot of life left in them.

Product Redesign for Decarbonization

The K-Round is a good example of what it will take to Design-for-Decarbonization, especially for those that operate on a razor-razorblade business model. It’s easy enough to replace the supplies as inventory turns over, just as pretty much all Keurig-produced K-cups are now recyclable.

But when redesign triggers changes in the equipment (razors, coffeemakers) the transition will necessarily take longer. The initial impact will be blunted as consumers replace their equipment faster than they might have otherwise, and it will take time for the new equipment to achieve the same levels of market penetration as the old equipment.

They also run the risk of lowering equipment sales during the transition, as some customers delay purchasing new equipment until the replacement is available.

Pull for Product Decarbonization

All of this means that the business case for decarbonization for consumer products is still complex and uncertain. Among climate tech and sustainability professionals, the goal is clear: make the low-carbon replacement the default choice, as rapidly as possible while acknowledging that there will be a transition, and that transition may take some time.

But the leaders responsible for prioritizing and funding these initiatives have a lot of other things to consider, too. Right now, mainstream consumers buy the low carbon alternative only if all other things are equal, and adoption doesn’t accelerate until there is a clear benefit to the consumer: price, performance, ease-of-use. It’s easier to optimize those parameters with existing products, and less risky.

Companies are starting to experience other forces to pull them into Design-for-Decarbonization projects. Regulators, insurance companies, and major reseller partners are all beginning to require much more transparent reporting about this, which means that many companies are beginning to understand their own carbon impacts and risks for the first time.

The closer they are to the need to manage climate risk, the more pull they experience earlier for Design-for-Decarbonization.

Keurig Leading the Way

Keurig has an advantage here because their core product is itself under direct threat from climate change, and because the original system produces visible waste, so the benefits will be just as visible to the ultimate consumer. This creates more pull than the typical consumer products company is experiencing today.

They also have their recent experience with recyclable K-cups to draw upon as they communicate with their channel partners about this change. They’ve already had experience marketing to the type of consumer who sees the K-Round as the breakthrough it is, and who will be willing to pay a premium for early adopter access.

It will take more than a redesigned K-Cup to ensure that we will all be able to enjoy our daily cup of morning coffee in 2050 without having to resort to coffee-flavored instant packets. But Keurig is leading the way towards a new way to think about product design that will make a well-caffeinated future more possible.

This is just one step on a much longer journey we’re on together as climate-focused innovators and consumers. Every product will ultimately need Design-for-Decarbonization.