I’m all for convenience, but at what cost to the environment?

In the almost 12 years that my wife and I have been living in marital bliss, she’s gotten me to understand the importance of caring about the environment.

Admittedly at first, I was hesitant to fully embrace her earth-saving ways. It’s funny really, so many of us deny our role in destroying the planet for the simple reason that we really have no desire to change the way in which we live – I was just as guilty.

But when you sit down and educate yourself on just about anything you knew little about before, you begin to understand how your constant state of denial only adds to a growing problem – especially in the case of the environment.

But American’s laziness is often the culprit when it comes to a lack of concern for our planet.

Take the popular Keurig Coffee Machines, which are all the rage these days.

Not only are the machines expensive, but so is the coffee.

I won’t bore you with a bunch of analytics and numbers, but if you do the math yourself you’ll find you’re paying almost 16 times MORE for a Keurig cup of coffee than you are for a large container of regular coffee.

But I don’t care if you want to waste your money, what I’m concerned about is what it’s doing to the environment.

Cindy Luppi of Clean Water Action says this about the K-Cups: “It’s hard to recycle because of the multiple materials. First, there is the plastic cup. Then, there is an aluminum foil top that keeps the coffee fresh inside of the K-Cup. Also inside of the K-Cup is a separate filter. It’s also typically too small to be recycled. The trend is that larger materials are accepted typically in recycling programs.”

Let’s say your household drinks 5 “K-Cups” a day. That’s 35 a week, about 140 a month and a staggering 1,680 K-Cups going into landfills every year – and that’s just YOUR house.

I’m all for convenience, but at what cost to our planet – a planet our children will be forced to live (in unhealthy conditions) and clean up long after we’re gone.

While I’m sure there are some who will argue that conventional coffee machines produce waste as well, they will never do the kind of damage K-Cup machines will do over time.

Don’t even get me started on the questionable safety of drinking coffee that’s pumped through a plastic cup.

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