Keurig has agreed to pay $1.5 million in penalties after the Securities and Exchange Commission charged the company with making misleading statements about just how recyclable its popular K-Cup single-use coffee pods are.
Questions over whether the single-use, hard-to-recycle plastic Keurig K-Cups are environmentally friendly have hovered over the company for years. A peer-reviewed paper from 2021 found that coffee pods account for more emissions than other ways of making coffee, because of greenhouse gases created from producing the packaging and from the subsequent waste.
For certain consumers, environmental concerns were a significant factor in deciding whether or not to purchase a Keurig system, the SEC said in its findings. In 2019, the sale of K-Cups as well as the Keurig brewing system accounted for a significant chunk of the company's sales.
The Keurig website says (with an asterisk), still as of Thursday morning, that since the end of 2020 that 100% of K-Cup pods have been recyclable. That, the SEC has found, is misleading.
Keurig told investors during the 2019 and 2020 fiscal years that the company's testing with recycling facilities “validate[d] that [K-Cup pods] can be effectively recycled," the SEC said. That claim left out a major caveat: Two of the country's largest recycling companies, which operate more than one-third of recycling facilities in the country, expressed "significant negative feedback" over the product's recyclability and expressed that they didn't intend to accept pods for recycling.
A spokesperson with Keurig Dr Pepper said in a statement to NPR, "We are pleased to have reached an agreement that fully resolves this matter." The firm has agreed to pay the fines without admitting or denying the SEC findings.
The statement continued, "Our K-Cup pods are made from recyclable polypropylene plastic (also known as #5 plastic), which is widely accepted in curbside recycling systems across North America. We continue to encourage consumers to check with their local recycling program to verify acceptance of pods, as they are not recycled in many communities. We remain committed to a better, more standardized recycling system for all packaging materials through KDP actions, collaboration and smart policy solutions."
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