The Guardian: The single-serve coffee maker supports growers, but also creates a lot of waste. Its story illustrates the power and limitations of corporate sustainability programs.

The company’s single-serve aluminum pods create unnecessary waste. A valuable, energy-intensive resource winds up in landfills. That’s bad.

eBay Germany is currently promoting Nespresso, “Every coffee you have will last forever”.

The Guardian: Coffee pods have seen colossal growth and remain the major growth driver in the US coffee market, according to a February 2015 report from Euromonitor. The mixed-plastic pods from Nespresso’s biggest rival, Keurig, are just about impossible to recycle, though Keurig says it will come up with a recyclable pod of its own by 2020. A small rival called Rogers Family Coffee sells biodegradable pods.

MacLeans: A Keurig near-monopoly is especially problematic given that K-Cups, unlike some coffee capsules, cannot be recycled, and the new machines won’t accept recyclable pods. “The organic matter inside the pods is highly compostable,” explains Nicole Stefenelli, CEO of Urban Impact, a commercial recycling facility in Vancouver. Packaging is usually plastic or aluminum, both of which could be recyclable, but aren’t. Unsurprisingly, most customers wanting the speed and ease of single-serve coffee would also be unwilling to go through the cumbersome task of separating hot and wet organic waste from recycling.