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America loves coffee pods. According to Keurig, 33 million households in the United States have one of its brewers, and 42% of American adults have a single-cup machine at home.
While they are very convenient, coffee pod machines generate a lot of waste. Most pods are made from plastic, aluminum, or a combination of both. Globally, an estimated 39,000 pods are manufactured every minute, with the majority ending up in landfills. While recyclable and compostable alternatives are increasingly available, they face their own issues. For example, many regions lack appropriate recycling or composting facilities. Wouldn’t it be great if pods didn’t need packaging at all?
Some companies are working on it. In 2022, a Swiss brand called CoffeeB introduced the Coffee Ball, a sphere of ground coffee coated in a protective seaweed layer. In 2024, we brought you news of Keurig’s “sustainable” plastic-free alternative: the K-Round, a single-serve coffee puck. Now Lavazza has followed suit, launching a new system called Tablì, which it bills as “the most significant reinvention of single-serve coffee in a generation.”
The Tablì machine uses what Lavazza calls tabs, small, round discs made using a proprietary technology that compresses ground coffee. Similar to the K-Round and the Coffee Ball, Tablì tabs are plastic-free. However, unlike those other versions, which have a plant-based coating, Tablì tabs are just coffee—they have no coating, according to Lavazza.
Much of the news coverage on the Tablì system has leaned into the plastic-free, sustainability angle. “Lavazza’s newest single-serve machine is brewing up a new promise to coffee lovers: less plastic waste,” reported Fast Company.
We’re definitely fans of reducing plastic waste, but there’s more nuance to the story. In order to use a Tablì tab, you need a whole new machine: current Lavazza models aren’t compatible with the new format. This was also the case with the K-Rounds, and new machines mean more waste.
It’s also worth noting that both Lavazza and Keurig have run afoul of government watchdogs over their sustainability claims. Canada’s competition bureau fined Keurig $3 million in 2022 for “false or misleading claims” over the recyclability of its pods. And last year, the United Kingdom’s advertising standards authority banned an online Lavazza ad because it implied that the company’s pods could be composted at home, when they in fact needed to be sent to an industrial facility.
Overall, it’s good that companies are developing more sustainable ways to brew coffee. However, given the sheer number of existing pod machines, maybe they should focus on making their fancy new plastic-free pucks and tabs backward-compatible instead.
Photo by Zack Xavier on Unsplash
