Coffee-pod makers have spent years trying to find a design that doesn’t leave a crumpled piece of plastic or aluminum with every brewed cup.
This week, Keurig Dr Pepper, one of the world’s biggest makers of coffee pods, launched a new way of brewing coffee it says will slash waste.
Called AltaRounds, the one-cup portions are made from compressed coffee wrapped in a coating derived from seaweed that the company sources from France. The puck-shaped capsules come eight to a box, and most varieties will cost $1.37 each — comparable to one of the company’s traditional K-Cup pods.
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“You can dispose of the AltaRounds any way you would normally dispose of your coffee grounds,” said Monique Oxender, the company’s chief sustainability officer. “They’re obviously great in compost and that’s where we’d like to see them go. I put it on my garden. I put it on my house plants.”
Others have tried
Some producers have tried recycling coffee pods, though conventional recyclers struggle to deal with small pieces of plastic. In 2024, the US Securities and Exchange Commission charged KDP with making inaccurate statements about the pods’ recyclability, saying two of the country’s largest recycling companies said they wouldn’t accept the packaging at their facilities. (KDP agreed to pay a $1.5 million civil penalty at the time.)
Waste from single-use coffee packaging is growing.
The global coffee pods market was valued at $40.5 billion in 2024 and projected to expand to $58.2 billion by 2030, according to Grand View Research, a market research and consulting firm. Nearly 40,000 coffee pods are produced every minute with more than 20 billion disposed of globally each year, according to Earth911, a recycling database provider.
Other coffee companies have created compostable packaging, but there are questions about whether these products can break down entirely and concerns about the lack of infrastructure to process them.
Last year, a UK regulator blocked two coffee companies from advertising their products as compostable because they could only be broken down in industrial facilities, not at home. In the US, there are a limited number of facilities that can handle industrial composting.
“I’d say the problem is really in the infrastructure and the economy of recycling and composting,” said James Sternberg, an assistant professor of sustainable packaging at Clemson University. “That’s where the real challenge is.”
New machine required
The AltaRounds don’t need to be shipped to an industrial composting facility, though that’s an option. KDP says they can be composted at home, the same way as ordinary coffee grounds, disintegrating within 12-16 weeks and fully biodegrading within 6 months.
Using them will require buying a new coffee machine, and because it can also make espresso, it will cost more than those that take traditional pods.
The company is offering the Keurig Alta for $499.99 as part of a bundle that includes four boxes of AltaRounds and glassware through October 15. The retail value would be $650, the company said. For comparison, KDP’s best-selling traditional K-Cup brewer costs $219.99, according to the company’s website.
The launch includes six coffee varieties: a single shot medium roast espresso, a double shot dark roast espresso, dark, medium, light and a caramel flavored coffee.
KDP is not the first company to sell compressed coffee pods. It’s licensing the alginate coating technology from Switzerland-based Delica’s CoffeeB system, which already rolled out a coffee ball that eliminates plastic waste.
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Neha Mallik, senior director of product management at Keurig, said the company chose the coating because it’s highly sustainable and keeps the pucks intact and fresh.
“We quickly realized we kind of need something to protect this and keep it together through shipping and distribution, so it comes to the consumer in one piece,” she said.
KDP hasn’t said whether it plans to eventually shed the widely used signature K-Cup, which will still work in the new Alta coffee maker.
“The consumer’s going to lead us on that,” said Oxender. “In order to transition a product, you’re going to have to get to scale and the consumer is going to guide us each step of the way here.”
