HELENA – For many people, coffee is an important part of the daily grind.
There’s no denying that single-serve coffee machines are easy to use, especially on those extra-sleepy mornings. But all of that convenience comes at a price. These capsules can’t simply be recycled as is. They need to be disassembled and cleaned first. The result: most just end up in the landfill.
While one single-serve coffee doesn’t seem like a big deal, throughout the week, they can really add up.
Coffee is a very popular beverage of choice in the newsroom, so for one week, MTN News collected all of the used pods in the trash. In a regular week,157 cups were used. Multiply that by 52 weeks in a year, and that’s 8,164 pods.
If you stacked all of those pods on top of each other at the end of the year, they would reach 1020 feet into the air- that’s over six times higher than the Montana Capitol Building.
But if the thought of all of that garbage has you feeling down in the dumps, there are re-fillable pods that can replace the disposable ones. Or, try french press coffee. Both of these methods offer the kick of caffeine – without the wasteful cups.
While it’s just one small thing, it can help make your daily dark roast a little more eco-friendly.
-Reported by Katie Alexander/MTN News
