Dive Brief:
- Councillor Jaye Robinson, chair of Toronto's public works and infrastructure committee, has called for a study into reducing the number of disposable coffee pods sent to landfills, as reported by CBC News.
- Jim McKay, general manager of the city's Solid Waste Management Services, said the plastic or aluminum versions are too small to sort and the newer "compostable" versions take too long to break down.
- According to the Coffee Association of Canada the pods are used by 25% of coffee drinkers. One manufacturer estimated that Canadians use 2.8 million pods per day.
Dive Insight:
Single-use coffee pods have generated billions of dollars in sales over the years while also becoming the scourge of environmentalists. Keurig Green Mountain has promised to make its K-Cups fully recyclable by 2020 and began selling the new models this year. Nespresso also has a free mail-in program with UPS and other companies have rolled out their own recyclable or compostable models.
Coffee pods may seem like a relatively small portion of the waste stream, but now that Toronto has set a 70% diversion goal by 2026 every pound counts. The city plans to focus on increasing participation in multi-unit buildings and potentially move to mixed waste processing within the next five years.
