Earth Day ESG Profile: Kuerig

Part 1 of 5: Earth Day ESG stories of corporations making good on their promise of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals, to please both investors and activists.

For over a decade, Keurig Dr Pepper, has been battling their public image of placing coffee convenience over environmental impact. According to Egg Production video Kill The K Cup, “there were enough K pods sold in 2014 to circle the earth 10.5 times.” In addressing the lack of progress across the K-cup ecosystem, Ryan Spicer, Director of Environmental Impact admitted, “Since the science of making the perfect K Cup is scientifically challenging, we’ve given up on making them recyclable. Instead we are going to pay $0.01 per each used K-Cup and go on a mission to harvest all of the existing K-Cups out of the landfills. Our mission is to have 100% of K-cups above ground and repurposed.”

Keurig Dr Pepper plans to use these soiled K-Cups to help build tiny homes. Initially partnering with Public Benefit Corporation, Pallet, the two companies plan to accelerate production of rapid-response shelters. These shelters can then be deployed into villages that “combine the dignity of personal space with the healing of community.”

“A few side benefits to using soiled K-Cups is that coffee grounds provide a natural deodorizing agent to maintain good air hygiene,” Pallet lead foreman J.J. added. “The coffee grounds emit strong acidic smells and have an aroma that can also act as a deterrent to some pests.”

According to Award winning Seattle based architect Garland Willis, principal of the firm Shape & Service Architecture, an estimated 206K cups to make a 50 sf tiny home. “Imagine for the amount of K-Cups consumed by King County (Washington) employees in a little over a week, materials for a tiny home can be sourced.” Shape & Service won accolades for designing a tiny home village on nearby Vashon Island.

Pallet and Keurig are set to announce that their first K-Cup villages are likely to be built on currently uninhabited islands Deadman and Victim Islands with plans to eventually build out on the more populous Hatt and Anderson Island.