Everybody’s time is precious. To many, coffee is precious as well.  And, to many, the planet is precious.  These groups are certainly not mutually exclusive, but with our current coffee maker they are becoming that way.  Every cup of coffee made in the office creates a plastic, non-biodegradable, non-recyclable byproduct.  We throw away at least 200 of these plastic k-cups per week (low estimate).

Now, I know better than to mess with people’s coffee.  No matter how wasteful our Keurig Brewer might be I know that it makes tasty coffee, that it’s time efficient, and that it’s not going anywhere.  No worries, Green Mountain makes an eco-friendly solution – “My-K Cup “ – a reusable filter that fits into the machine the same way that the plastic one does. It makes coffee in exactly the same amount of time*! Plus, since this mesh filter is not bound by the limited k-cup options, we can branch out to fresher coffee: actual coffee beans, locally roasted beans…even locally roasted hipster beans!

But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The first “coffee of the week” picks are from Peet’s.  Since I used to be a barrista there, I had a few favorites that we ordered to be our trial run:  Major Dickason’s Blend , Ethiopian Fancy, and Sumatra.

If the ‘green’ option makes a higher quality cup o’ joe, will that benefit outweigh the cost of an additional 2 minutes spent brewing and breaking the habit of using the disposable cups? Stay tuned…

*Disclaimer: yes, admittedly, it does take a few seconds pre-coffee-brewing to fill the filter with grounds and then a minute or so post-coffee-smelling-yummy-in-cup to rinse it out.