Coffee Pods Make Business Insider’s List of Things People Recycle Wrong

Coffee pods made Business Insider’s list of 25 things people recycle by mistake, or at least the way most of us do it: dropped in the bin straight out of the machine.

Rajesh Buch, who teaches sustainable business at Arizona State University, tells BI that a pod’s foil lid and plastic cup can each be recycled, but only once they’re pulled apart, emptied and clean and dry. Even then, he calls pods a “nuisance item.” Anything about 2 inches across or smaller tends to fall through the sorting equipment at recycling plants, so a lot of pods never get recovered no matter how carefully you prep them.

BI notes that coffee companies have moved to more recyclable plastic, and it points to Nescafé taking back pods that customers return. The same list flags a few other kitchen regulars, including ceramic mugs, plastic utensils and compostable plastic cups, which can contaminate the regular plastic stream. The article also stresses that rules change from one city to the next.

Our take: if you’re going to recycle K-Cups, peel the lid, dump the grounds (they’re fine in compost or the trash) and rinse the cup. Then check whether your local program actually takes small plastics, because if the sorter can’t catch them, your effort ends up in the landfill anyway. Nespresso runs its own recycling program for its aluminum capsules, which gets around the size problem. The cheapest fix is skipping the throwaway pod entirely, and our guide on how to use a reusable K-Cup shows how to get a decent cup out of one.