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Comment by benrutter | Hacker News Reader

> While I sympathize with the sentiment to eliminate plastic from the transport chain for anything ingestible, it's practically impossible in the modern world.

I think the argument is pretty simple:

- Plastic is bad (environment, microplastics, etc) - We should minimize it

That doesn't necessitate a "all the way to zero or don't bother" logic, which what you're saying reads as.

Coffee pods machines have been an environmental nightmare, great to see a growing trend that addresses this.

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If you care enough about the environment to get rid of plastic you should get rid of coffee too, this argument makes no sense

Yeah this is the real issue. Ironically Nespresso pods are probably more environmentally friendly even if thrown in the trash and not recycled because the real environmental burden comes from the coffee itself and those pods are highly efficient in terms of how little coffee is consumed per shot.

I still drink coffee regularly so am not going to say people should stop doing what I continue to do but it's worth it for coffee drinkers to be thoughtful about the impact of their consumption.

Environmental burden of coffee: are you taking about transport costs to wherever you are, or something else?

The excess coffee used at home vs the precise amount in a Nespresso pod is the driver of that delta that I was referring to.

The overall issue is that coffee pod waste is de minimus compared to the environmental impact of the coffee industry at large.

Not OP, but coffee is really high on water use, and can be a big cause of deforestation in some cases. So they're probably getting at this.

Apparently producing coffee beans for one large coffee uses 140kg of water. Ok, that sounds like a lot.

But also apparently producing one meal worth of chicken takes 700kg of water. Over 3000kg of water for beef. So I think, in comparison, coffee water use if negligible.

"This machine used 99% less plastic over its lifetime, but it still uses some plastic, so why bother?"

"You say reducing plastic is good for the environment, but then you drink coffee which is bad for the environment, so you shouldn't bother even reducing plastic"

"EVs still use energy that's been generated from gas, even if its a lot less, so you might as well just drive a diesel powered pick up truck"

Coffee machines are a luxury, plastic or not it doesn't matter, it'll be so small in your overall footprint. The first and second order effects of coffee production will outweigh it by a factor of at least 1000.

It's like stopping using aspirin because "drugs are bad" while doing meth every day

Do you have anything supporting the idea that coffee is 1000 times worse than the plastic waste from coffee pods?

That feels like a pretty wild claim, but I'll happily admit if I'm wrong.

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