1 How Coffee Put Pollution to an End

How Coffee Put Pollution to an End!

By: Julia Mohr

Problem:

I wanted to find out how much plastic and money could be saved if everyone in the U.S used a reusable K-Cup instead of a plastic non-reusable K-Cup.

Graphs:

(Links)

Money Graph Plastic Saved

My Abstract:

Coffee is a beverage many people enjoy but making it at home causes the Earth to be polluted. Plastic pollution will cause the Earth to increase Global warming. This happens because approximately 25% of Americans use non-reusable K-Cups unlike the 19% that uses a reusable K-Cup. Non-reusable K-Cups are made of plastic and are just thrown away in the trash polluting the Earth. Over 75 million non-reusable K-Cups are used and thrown away in a single day. Secondly I believe all coffee companies should sell their bagged coffee in not plastic but paper bags to save even more money and plastic. I wanted to show how much a person can help the Earth and save money by using the Eco-fill K-Cup.

Coffee is expensive, especially if people are constantly going to the store to buy K-Cups. On the other hand just buying one K-Cup and paper bagged coffee will not start to add up. I started my experiment by buying a reusable K-Cup, paper bag coffee, and several non-reusable K-Cups as my control. I designed a K-Cup of my own on the 3-D printer to show a design that could be used as a model of the Eco-fill. I made two charts showing the comparison of how much money and plastic would be saved.

First I did the math for my money saved and it came as a surprise to me how much a person could save on one K-Cup. I figured out the average of how much a package of 48 K-Cups would cost. I found out the average box of 48 K-Cups cost $30.00, because I divided 48 by 30 and got $1.60 per K-Cup. Total money a person could save on 48 cups of coffee comes out to be $10.07 and a total of 10% saved. Secondly I did the math for the plastic saved and the amount decreased over 10.07 and 10%. For plastic saved first I subtracted the weight of a full K-cup by the coffee weight in the cup to find out how much and empty cup weighed (grams) 20-14=6. Then I did 75x365 days to find how many million ounces of plastic waste was saved per year, 6x75millionx365=164250000000. Lastly I simplified to l,362,109,265 pounds or 164,250,000 kilograms.