By Josh Chaitin
Creating a more sustainable workplace can pose a lot of challenges but sometimes it’s the little things that can go a long way.
Like all good Seattle companies, the Fearey team is proudly addicted to coffee. Recently, we started using a Keurig coffee machine that makes individual cups of coffee with “K Cups” – those individual pods that contain enough grounds for one cup – for those moments when the air pot is empty and you need your caffeine fix but don’t want to brew a whole pot.
Personally, I like the cup of coffee the device makes, but I hated the fact that every time I used the thing I ended up throwing away a plastic pod filled with spent coffee grounds. Plastic ends up in the garbage and the grounds don’t end up in the compost.
My colleague, Aaron, made my day when he brought in this nifty little reusable filter made by Ekobrew that fits our Keurig machine. Fill the thing up with fresh grounds, brew your individual cup, put the used grounds in the compost and rinse out the filter. No more plastic pods mixed with coffee headed to the landfill, so I don’t feel guilty about making that individual cup after the air pot is empty. My next step will be to figure out how much plastic we’re eliminating from our waste stream along with any other measurable benefits of this small wonder.
Stay tuned.