Coffee Cup Horror Story : Attack of The Pod Creature
It was just another day at the office. We were getting ready to wish “Kelly” a ‘Happy Birthday’ when suddenly we heard a loud noise and the ground began to shake. We ran outside to find that we were being attacked…… by single serving coffee pods?
This is the premise behind the horror short, “Kill the K-Cup”, recently released as part of the “Kill the K-Cup” Campaign, and gaining major attention across the internet. The campaign is a partnership between Egg Studios and the Canadian coffee shop, Social Bean, and is asking Keurig to make recyclable coffee pods immediately.
The popularity of single use coffee makers has grown exponentially since their introduction to the market in 1998. According to a survey by the National Coffee Association, nearly one in five people surveyed admitted to having drank single serving coffee the day before. Single serving coffee is now the second most popular way to brew coffee, after the good old fashioned traditional drip method.
The Company Green Mountain Keurig seems to have control over the market and is outlandishly successful. Single servings come in a plastic and tin foil and are affectionately referred to as K-Cups. In 2013 Keurig produced 8.3 BILLION K-Cups. K-Cups are popular because of their convenience and they give the user a choice of what kind of coffee they want.
K-Cups are not easy to recycle. Though Keurig has some reusable options they are not available for all models. Only 5% of K-Cups are actually made with recyclable plastic, everything else must be sent to the dump. According to “Kill the K-Cup” the amount of K-Cups discarded in 2013 could wrap around the equator 10.5 times. That is a lot of trash!
Personally I wonder what is so wrong about having only 1 flavor of coffee available in the office and having workers rotate making the coffee and cleaning the single drip machine. Is all this convenience really necessary?
Though the “Kill The K-Cup” video is complete fantasy it does make you question the impact of the popularity of the K-Cup. Asking Keurig to expand the recyclability of K-Cups is the least that can be done.
Coffee Attack via Shutterstock