Apparently my Green Mountain Coffee post ruffled a few more feathers than I had realized. Just after I posted about the response from Heather, Michael Dupee commented on the original post with some words of his own. He is the VP of Corporate Social Responsibility and instead of paraphrasing what he said I’ll let him speak for himself.

We read through your post about environmental impact of the K-Cup portion pack and want to respond to your concerns.

Packaging is an area of major environmental concern for all consumer product companies and we understand that the impact of the K-Cup waste stream is one of Green Mountain Coffee’s most significant environmental challenges. Today’s K-Cup portion pack is not recyclable or compostable and finding a better approach is a big priority for us. We are working on a few different fronts to improve the environmental characteristics of the K-Cup system, as well as to mitigate its impact.

Here’s what we’re doing:

First, we are actively researching alternatives to the petroleum-based materials that make up the K-Cup. We are continually looking for ways to improve all of our coffee packaging, while still maintaining the freshness and quality that consumers have come to expect from us. We have made some strides in this area. Our hot and cold beverage cups are made from fully renewable materials. And our new 10 and 12 ounce bags of coffee are made with 19% PLA – a bio-plastic sourced from sugar.

Second, we are conducting a Life-Cycle Analysis to help us quantitatively understand the environmental impact of the K-Cup. Waste at the end of a process is an important factor in understanding the environmental impact of a product, but impact occurs throughout a product’s life. By studying the full impact of K-Cup packaging, we can more clearly understand how and where we can take concrete steps to reduce its impact.

Third, we are introducing more Fair Trade Certified coffees into our K-Cup line. We aren’t doing this to distract our consumers from the environmental issues – we believe there is a legitimate upside for Fair Trade. Because the single cup market is growing quickly, having Fair Trade Certified coffees in K-Cups exposes more people to Fair Trade Certified coffees and helps grow the Fair Trade system. K-Cup portion packs also help increase awareness of the missions of our valued partners like Heifer International and Newman’s Own Organics.

Finally, as mentioned in the responses above, we offer “My K-Cup,” a reusable filter assembly that can be filled by the consumer, is easily cleaned, and is compatible with all Keurig home brewers sold today.

We do address this issue on our Corporate Social Responsibility website at:
http://tinyurl.com/5p3fqw

We’ll keep this site updated as we make progress on this issue.

Mike Dupee
VP, Corporate Social Responsibility
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc.

What do you Swye readers think? Let me and them know in the comments.