In the United States, 400 million cups are brewed & enjoyed every day. We’re here to help you find the best cup of joe for you and the environment.
Sustainability from bean to brew
Coffee culture around the world has grown into a love of cheap convenience. Coffee connoisseurs may roll their eyes when someone says that they love their Starbucks ‘Venti iced skinny hazelnut macchiato with sugar-free syrup’ because… can that even be considered coffee?!
For many of us who can’t tell the differences between blends & intensities, we just know that we like coffee. We like it enough to know that we enjoy some more than others, but not much beyond that. So when the opportunity arose for us to make barista-style coffee from our own home with brands like Nespresso, of course we jumped on it! I mean– who wouldn’t want impeccably brewed espresso topped with perfectly foamed milk every morning for a fraction of the cost than at your local coffee shop?
But the rise of Nespresso has developed a single-use waste problem for the sake of our own convenience. Plastic & aluminum coffee pods don’t seem like a big problem, but 29,000 single-use pods are ending up in landfills every minute, taking hundreds of years to break down.
Your coffee shouldn’t outlive you. It’s time for a greener solution.
So if you’re anything like me, who loves good coffee AND cares about the environment, you’re probably searching for the place where your values & taste buds meet. I did all of the work for you & reviewed some of the best-tasting espresso pods that even the planet loves. Check out my top 5 eco-friendly espresso pods to fall in love with.
Topping this list is Woken Coffee. I fell in love with their 8 different Italian-roasted blends and each cup tasted like I had a world-class barista at home making lattes. The intensities of the blends range from 4 to 10 but the flavor of each pod was to die for. Some had chocolate-y notes, others were fruity with a hint of floral, but my absolute favorites were the Deciso blend with cacao notes and the Riserva which had notes of honey.
Woken is the industry’s first brand to develop a 100% home-compostable and fully biodegradable espresso pod. So if you have your own compost, you can toss the pod into your home compost bin and it will fully biodegrade within 90 days.
8 Different Blends:
As a Coffee Couture trailblazer for many years, you can imagine that I was excited to try Bulletproof’s compostable pods. If you ever got your hands on Bulletproof’s OG recipe, coffee + MCT oil + grass-fed ghee, then you’d understand why I chose it as #2 on my list.Their focus on sustainability made me wonder when they would take part in the global movement to make coffee more eco-friendly. Overall, the taste was as delicious as it has always been. My only complaint is that I wish Bulletproof offered more compostable blends.
The aroma of these blends are intense and decadent; they filled my house with wafts of delicately fresh coffee beans and my husband definitely wasn’t complaining. Each brew was full of complex flavor but ultimately, I was bummed to find out that these pods could not be composted from home (only from commercial facilities) and if you don’t have access to one of those, the pods aren’t even recyclable & eventually end up in a landfill. But hey– at least these plant-based pods break down faster than plastic!
Grana has developed two different types of espresso pods for those of us who don’t have a Nespresso-compatible machine. Only one of the pods (Nespresso compatible) are compostable, biodegradable, and completely free from plastic and aluminum. I loved the bold flavors of Grana Eco, but just wished they were a bit stronger.
Larry’s Coffee made it to my list because I found their espresso to be tasty with a lot of potential. Their pods are full-bodied, smokey, and have a nice hint of underlying sweetness. It’s a bummer that these pods are only recyclable and not compostable, thankfully using BPA-free plastic so you’re not harming your body with your brew.
However, I have a feeling that these plastic pods could change in the future, as Larry’s Coffee places a high value on sustainability practices in their business.
So if you’re looking for delicious variety and top-tier quality, my advice is: start with Woken. You can’t go wrong with their 8-blend sampler that transports you right to a little cafe in Italy where you have no responsibilities other than enjoying this perfect cup.
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