THE GUARDIAN - If you drink one of the 2bn cups of coffee consumed each day worldwide, you may have seen headlines last month celebrating the coffee pod, a single-serving container – typically made of plastic or aluminum – that can be inserted into a machine to brew a cup of coffee.
New analysis found that coffee pods may be more environmentally friendly than filter coffee, making headlines in the Washington Post and the BBC. But could it really be true? Some experts and coffee enthusiasts questioned how good for the planet pods actually are, especially given the waste that coffee capsules notoriously produce. But some scholars maintain that – even though it’s important to consider how capsules are disposed of – most greenhouse gas emissions happen while coffee is being grown. So reducing how much coffee you use, even if that takes using a coffee pod, can decrease the emissions of your coffee habit.
Studies like the one Viana and his team are conducting are important, says Andrew Gray, an assistant professor of watershed hydrology at the University of California-Riverside. “It’s just that, oftentimes, researchers seem to tend to focus in on using one of these kinds of indices for environmental or climate impact – like CO2 emission to the atmosphere – and then potentially overlook other kinds of potential impacts on the environment – like the production of pollution, in this case, plastic pollution.”
“A hallmark of the era that we’re living in now, and have been living in for the past couple of decades, is the increasing use of plastic for lots of single-use applications,” said Gray. “Plastics, for a long time, have been thought of as inert substances,” but scientists are starting to increasingly understand their potential impacts on human and animal health, as carcinogens and endocrine disruptors. “There’s lots of potential cause for concern, especially since we’re finding microplastics everywhere.”