"If the problem is waste, that's something for the government to sort out."

Yes, let's put a $10 tax on each. But then you would probably complain about overregulation.

Please avoid posting unsubstantiative or potential "flame baiting" content to HN per the guidelines.

Obviously you're trolling here, but I expect more from adults that behaving exactly like spoiled children dropping litter everywhere because their parents or maybe their servants will clean up after them.

About this convenience thing, people are just getting lazier and lazier and then come up with rationalisations. Keeping a clean moka pot is painless, it also makes a cheap, really nice and eco-friendly coffee.

It's absurd to produce 10000% more thrash because you just don't want to wet your hands.

How about we make "does not require government intervention to prevent environmental catastrophe" one of the criteria for being a good invention.

That's one way it could be the worst invention of the last few decades.

>> If the problem is waste, that's something for the government to sort out.

Do you mean that they need to manage it via regulations? Or deal with the externalities of all that waste? Because in the latter, government = us.

Regulations, similar to how the EU is working toward banning plastic bags.

Everybody loves plastic bags but they are taking them away from us. K-Cups could (should?) have a similar fate.

The best inventions are those where other people have to deal with the externalities? How do you propose the government handles this? Banning this kind of packaging?

A tax on disposable plastics is probably pretty doable.

The worst part is that K-Cups solve a non-existent problem. Their advantages over your normal office percolator is that it takes less work, nobody has to make it, they don't collect rancid coffee oils that nobody bothers to clean out, and the beans are marginally better than the garbage most offices are buying. You can also stock a variety of flavors without having to commit your entire office to drinking a pot of artificial cinnamon flavoring.

But you could solve all of those by just using instant coffee and a water boiler! Just about every other country in the world has figured out how to make decent enough instant coffee, especially in Asia. But for some reason, America is still stuck with Folgers crystals.

That's actually where I'd start if you want to have an impact via guerrilla marketing. Convince your office to switch over to something like Sudden coffee or even the Starbucks Via packs. No, it's not as good as your fancy third-wave coffee spot around the corner or even just a regular Starbucks. But it can be head and shoulders above anything a Keurig will give you.

>the proof is that people are more than willing to pay the insane markup

One of the tent pole ideas of capitalism is that people are rational actors/consumers. They aren't.

Isn't it supposed to optimise resource usage towards needs .. rather than waste them, running the environment in the process?