How to Improve your K-Cups’ Environmental Impact

K-Cups are bad for the environment. They’re plastic, it’s hard to recycle them, plastic is EBIL, okay, okay, alright.

But I love the damn things. Alright? I said it. When it’s 3 in the morning, I just can’t be arsed to make a whole pot of coffee. I grab a K-cup and make a single cup and Ahhhhh, it’s so good!

So, maybe I’m going to hell. But here’s how I reduce the environmental impact of those nasty, awful K-cups. Want to hear?

Reduce, Re-use, Recycle the K-Cups

Back in the early 90s, us Earth-Lovin’, Tree-Huggin’ types had a saying: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! Well, it isn’t super-easy to reduce using K-Cups, when you’re as addicted to coffee as I am . . . and not all places will recycle the little brats. BUT! You can reuse K-Cups, and I’ll show you how.

K-Cups Make LOTS of Coffee! 😀

Some coffee perfectionistas may scream at this, but your typical K-Cups actually make a lot more coffee than just one cup. I’ll slap one in my Keurig machine and run the cycle twice, to make a super-big mug of coffee. LOL! Extra caffeine for me . . . and extra love for the environment.

In doing this, I help two things at once: my wallet and the ecology. I am using the same K-cup twice, so that’s one I did not have to purchase, and also by extension, one plastic cup that didn’t end up in a landfill. Two for one!

Make Hot CoaFfee.

Another idea is even more fun. I am nuts about hot chocolate. I’m crazy about it! And I love adding things to my hot cocoa, like flavors and spices and–lots of the time–coffee. So what I do is add my hot cocoa mix to the mug, then slap that mug into the Keurig machine with a used K-cup still in there. The result is that I get some coffee flavor in my hot cocoa, and re-use the K-cup. Double bonus!

Hot Cocoa + Coffee = Hot Coaffee. :3

K-Cup Seedling Pots?

My last idea is to re-use those empty K-cups for seedlings. Once you have used the cups, rip off the top and dump the coffee into a composting bin. (It’s too acidic for what you’re about to do.) Now you have a tiny little pot with a drainage hole pre-poked in the bottom! Fill it with soil, poke 2-3 seeds in it, add water, and put it in a warm place. Plants will germinate in there. Ta-da!

Conclusion

Yes, I acknowledge, the best way to help the environment in regard to K-cups is not to use them at all. Plastic is ebil and we need to reduce our use of it as much as possible. In addition, companies do make nifty, reusable cups for Keurig machines that you can fill over and over again with coffee.

That said, if your life is hectic like mine, and those refillable ones seriously piss you off (sorry, but they do, I get the coffee everywhere, I can’t hold them well, and I burn myself trying to empty them, lol), then hopefully this essay will give you food for thought.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

FloxMonster™ out.