LG's New Instant Coffee Machine Mixes Two Pods, Generates Twice the Trash, and its Nasa-inspired design looks like the Apollo lunar lander is relieving itself in your coffee cup.
Especially for stuff like this, where the pods could easily (and often are) just replaced with stainless steel strainers + standard compostible paper filter liners that you load up with a tablespoon from a traditional container.
that you load up with a tablespoon from a traditional container
The point of the pods is to make money from people with two seconds to make their coffee. Yes, it's wasteful and expensive, but that's the point. You can make great coffee over an open fire. Or in a basic French press.
I hate typing this because it gives Nestle the slightest shred of credit. Their pods are aluminum and recyclable. Keurig k-cups started off as non-recyclable plastic but have now switched to some kind of, apparently, recyclable plastic...supposedly. Doesn't make the use of pods much better but it's not nothing.
Aren’t you supposed to rip off the top, empty out the coffee into your compost/garbage, and then recycle the pod? Or you can drop them off at a store where they sit for a couple day until the coffee starts to rot and the whole thing gets shipped to Nespresso where they probably throw it in a a landfill.