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Comment by softwaredoug | Hacker News Reader

I’ve seen a couple comments that nespreso is wasteful. It’s worth pointing out the relatively easy to use capsule recycling and composting program. You fedex bags of used capsules and they recycle and compost then (supposedly)

https://www.nespresso.com/us/en/how-to-recycle-coffee-capsul...

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Each capsule contains 5-7g of coffee (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nespresso), so that's roughly 35-50 capsules per 250g bag of ground coffee. Even if the recycling scheme was used by all consumers (highly unlikely) these things are still vastly more resource intensive than alternatives.

That still seems wasteful compared to the alternatives.

To be fair to Nespresso, there are some potential environmental benefits from only boiling the required quantity of water, and reduction of waste coffee (i.e. in the pot and undrunk). It's not easy to determine if these outweigh the waste of the pods themselves.

(I'm no Nespresso shill, I grind and Aeropress - I think my biggest source of waste is on power from boiling too much water)

coffee and water are not garbage. you can grow plants in them alone without spending any added energy

Boiling more water than you need at that time is a waste of energy.

I would vote for not creating plastic waste in the first time. This is not life saving essential product you cannot live without which you need to produce in mega quantities. What percentage of the capsules is recycled and what percentage ends up in the landfills? Is recycling not energy intensive operation? (Someone even mentioned fedexing used capsules?) I mean single use plastic shopping bags, plates and cutlery are convenient too... why do we try to reduce them ?

Why do we falsely claim their pods are plastic? Their competitors use plastic and receive no criticism. They do aluminum and a bag drop program and are trashed

If you're looking for someone to say "Fuck Keurig too" I'm happy to oblige. We're saying there's no need to create these pods at all when regular coffee brewing doesn't produce this kind of waste. 95% of pods don't get recycled, that deserves some criticism.

I admit I did not do research before posting, my bad. Was not aware they are made from aluminum. But it is still nonsense to create packaging for every 5 grams of product made.

At least locally Kcups from Kurig are much more common - 100% plastic. I always thought of the nespresso ones with the recycling bags as more enviro friendly.

But I also thought Apple with its long support lifetimes for products and good resale values was probably better for environment than the android junk with uncertain supply chains, but HN regularly has stories trashing apple has terrible for environment and never says anything about android so who knows.

You can also buy reusable nespresso kits with pods that you can keep refilling.

how much fossil fuel is burned getting those capsules to a recycling area vs just dumping grounds in your backyard?

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