It’s time! This week, Keurig announced that nobody was buying its DRM-enabled coffee machine that only accepted again). But let’s be honest: It’s time to stop buying coffee pods altogether.
By some bizarre twist of fate, I attended a Nespresso event last summer and received its newest machine for free. I’d used a Keurig machine at my old office and was thrilled by the convenience. The new Nespresso Virtuoline, however, is like a Cadillac version of the Keurig 2.0 in a way. At $US350, the system is expensive, and it’s also equipped with a barcode scanner that ensures your coffee is brewed perfectly you only use Nespresso brand pods. The Keurig 2.0 is equipped with similar technology that Keurig says exists for safety reasons. Everybody knows that it’s really because companies like Keurig and Nespresso really just want to sell you bad, wasteful coffee for over $US50 a pound.
Like a chump, I started buying Nespresso pods for my otherwise free machine. It was so shiny and those little pods saved me a trip to the coffee shop! When news of Keurig’s inevitable downturn hit, however, I did a little bit of maths in my head. Over the past few months, I’ve spent more on those pods than the machine’s original cost. At $US1.50 per pod, they’re actually more expensive than a small coffee at the trendy spot across the street from my apartment. The pods are also clogging up a landfill somewhere, since I can’t really recycle them when they’re full of coffee grounds. That’s a handful of my spent pods in the photo above. I certainly can’t re-use them. Meanwhile, the coffee kind of tastes like mud.
This is all my fault. It would be easy to blame Nespresso — or Keurig, since that’s what got me started on coffee pods. But this shiny new machine was free, and I would have been a fool not to use it. Therein lies the fault.
Even if you buy the machine, you can convince yourself that convenient, pod-hungry coffee machines pay for themselves in time and convenience. You convince yourself that the pod coffee tastes not too bad and ignore how many pounds of garbage you’re creating along the way. You tell yourself that America promised you innovation. You even think that refillable coffee pods make the whole system more sensible, less wasteful, and even acceptable.
I did all of these things, save the last part about refillable pods. (Nespresso doesn’t offer this option.) And at this point, I’m ashamed for being such a terrible consumer. I’m going to start making coffee that tastes good. I’m going to get a Chemex or, better yet, a cheap pour-over coffee dripper. I’m going to start using my brain. I’m going to stop buying coffee pods, and you can too.