The pollution is serious! Capsule coffee is banned in Hamburg, Germany.

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In the series of advertisements that have been hit in recent years, the charm of the capsule coffee machine is so unstoppable that even the near-perfect George Clooney has to bow. But in real life, the negative impact of capsule coffee on the environment has gradually surfaced, and the city of Hamburg in Germany has even banned the use of capsule coffee by public agencies. "just 6 grams of coffee needs 3 grams of packaging, and taxpayers' money should not be spent on such a place," said Hamburg's minister of sustainable development. Hamburg's sustainable development policy is strict, in addition to coffee capsules, disposable tableware and the use of disposable packaging of sodas, water bottles and beer are also rejected by Hamburg.

Kill the K-cup, a video released by civil society in 2014, began by saying, "by 2014, all discarded coffee capsules can circle the earth 10.5 times!" Taking this as a starting point, the production team depicted the fantasy world in which the coffee capsule monster occupied the city building and fired capsule bullets at humans. "destroy them before the capsule kills us!" As soon as the film was launched, it aroused great repercussions and discussion. John Sylvan, the inventor of capsule coffee in 2015, also said in an interview with the Atlantic that he regretted his invention because it was difficult to recycle and created a lot of garbage, and he did not use a capsule coffee machine himself.

The capsule coffee machine was originally designed to create an easy-to-use and clean coffee machine for the office environment, and later gradually evolved into a home coffee machine. After the launch of the capsule coffee machine, sales began to slow down in recent years, and has continued to grow at an annual growth rate of 9% since 2011. At present, the companies that produce capsule coffee machines on the market are led by Keurig and Nespresso. Keurig has recently expanded the consumer market by launching soda capsule machines and thick soup capsule machines, and the company has promised that all capsules will use recyclable and environmentally friendly materials by 2020.

From the point of view of environmental protection, reducing waste at the production end can solve the problem from the root. Although the use of environmentally friendly materials can be recycled, the amount of garbage is still considerable. Capsule machines will gradually disappear in the future, or evolve into milk tea machines, blenders and other forms to conquer the world, depending on how consumers react.