A post on Twitter got me thinking about how much waste there is around a great cup of coffee. I feared that I would find I was being a bad person by encouraging some industry to burn up resources helping me get my morning drinks. Today I would like to speak a touch about helping the planet, not on a soap box here, but a quick couple lines that will hopefully help you with some info.

What I found was good and bad news. Unless you get into a situation of someone having a very dirty machine that burns up huge amounts of electricity to heat the small amount of water there is no major impact. The process of gathering and processing the beans, storage and shipping and the selling are all in line with most food products. Whew!

The area that is about to get nailed for waste is the little Single Serving machines we see everywhere. I’m guilty of having one, as is most of my friends. It is a convenience that after reading up a bit, I might have to consider doing without. It is a situation where the sheer numbers off all of those little plastic containers going into the trash all over the world is getting out of hand.

Jennifer Berry over at Earth911 wrote an article just last week on what she found about some producers of these coffee pucks are doing to help. It appears some are getting the message and changing the materials and processes. Let encourage them to continue when we can – thanks!