Last year we started to write about the need for Keurig to better address the growing environmental impact their K-Cup production was having on the environment – both from a public relations point of view and more importantly the impact of these composite, man-made, materials would be having in the long term.
We are pleased to say that Keurig has obviously been feeling the heat of public opinion on this matter and have recently released K-Cups that can be better broken down and therefore easier to recycle. We know our writing was no influence here, we are pretty sure they aren’t keeping abreast of our latest views, but one thing that probably has driven this view more recently has been an “own goal” by Keurig themselves.
As we covered in our post last year looking, at the new Keurig 2.0 design, the wave that is public opinion hasn’t been washing gently onto the shores of Keurig; but rather it has been more like a storm coming ashore. Loyal Keurig users, thinking the move to 2.0 was just another nice upgrade in machine, found out that no, it was a means of Keurig to lock-out third party vendors in the pod supply market and so trust-up the firm’s market share. It’s fair to say that this has not gone down well with most users and Keurig has had to back-peddle ever since.
So Keurig will be hoping as they move more of their K-Cup production to the recyclable pods, public opinion may be somewhat placated and help the firm to polish-up its rather dented and batted environmental credentials.
And the changes that the company makes in these areas is going to have an impact on the market, how other firms behavior, and the impact of the product. For a firm that accounts for as much as 30 percent of an estimated $40 billion domestic market, small changes they make ripple across the industry. You don’t get to the point of 1 and 5 families having your appliance in their homes without having changed the way things are done in that field. And therefore how things can be done better going forward.
You can see from their recently revamped environmental section of their website they are putting some serious resource into this area of their business. With an overall aim of having all K-Cups being made in a more sustainable manner by 2020. We commend them for the change and new energy they are applying to this area; and encourage them to get ahead of the game now rather than just reacting to changes as they hit their shoreline.