Skip to main content

Keurig_RecyclingNearly every time a customer is looking at a single-cup brewing option from Corporate Essentials, the question of sustainability arises. In the past, every other single-cup coffee manufacturer would compete against the Keurig Brewing System by questioning its “green-ness” versus whichever single-cup option they were pitching.

In late 2011, Keurig’s Grounds to Grow On Program was rolled out on the east coast of the United States, and Office Coffee Services were finally able to give customers a solid option for recycling their spent Keurig K-Cups.

Over the past few weeks, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (Keurig’s parent company) has been in the news a lot for the strides they are making in coming up with ways to convert the waste from brewing Keurig K-Cups into synthetic gas.


Green Mountain Coffee Roasters – the company which produces all of those Keurig K-Cups you love, is currently working with the University of North Dakota and bioenergy specialist Wynntryst, LLC on a project aimed at using the waste from its coffee processing plant to produce energy.

The goal of this project is to develop a gasification power system fueled by coffee residues, plastic packaging, paper, cloth or burlap and single-serve Keurig K-Cups. Through this process, Green Mountain hopes to reduce landfill tonnage by two percent per dollar compared to the prior year.

The university’s Energy & Environmental Research Center and its partners will try to use its advanced fixed-bed gasifier system to turn the complex mixture into clean, synthetic gas, or syngas.

If you’d like more information on this project, our friends at both Roaste.com and SmartPlanet.com have done a little better job getting into the technical side.

Joe Simonovich

Joe has a strong background in marketing and a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP). The start to his career as a customer service representative has given him a unique foundation and different perspective on almost all business-related situations. Joe is now the Chief Growth Officer (and Director of Creating Awesomeness) at Corporate Essentials. He brings a unique skill set and a hands-on approach to any leadership role and believes that hustle is simply a way of life.