Just having my first and probably only…
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I’m lucky, can drink strong black coffee all day and before bed, then go straight to sleep.
DG…
I have particularly noticed with Italian folks that there are rules!! Frothy milk only permitted up to lunch time, then expresso. After about 4pm coffee is off limits! When in Rome (or the Dolomites in my case) and all that!
Peter
I’m not sure if there is a direct link, but some years back a colleague suffered chronic gall stone problems. He was hospitalised and in incredible pain. He was a prolific coffee drinker prior to this incident and afterwards, coffee was 100% off limits. That was on advice from the medics. Everything in moderation as they say…!
Peter
This is for the use of ‘expresso’ 
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Hoping my home details are not available - I’ll be careful answering when the door bell rings!! 
I get the fun and convenience and even taking aside the environmental issues, Nespresso espresso is still way too far from a real good shot. Enjoy your coffees!
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Yes and I’d counter argue that logic suggests, even putting aside the commonly raised eco issues of the pod it’s self, using ground beans in an espresso machine is probably more eco than putting a thimble full of coffee into a pod and then shipping said pod around the world before it gets to your pod machine. Shipping a kilo of bagged coffee to my mind sounds like a more economical shipping method than the same coffee in boxes of pods. However maybe I’ve got the wrong end of the stick here and you’re actually talking not of the energy used getting the coffee to you but about the end users physical effort and energy in actually making the coffee. If so then, for me, expending an extra 30 seconds of my time and an extra calorie or two in the process is worth it for the extra taste and flavour.
All in the interests of interesting debate 
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I use a hand grinder at work and the 60s or so spent grinding the beans I call a moment of ‘grindfulness’
Very therapeutic
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You are perpetuating a belief without actually reading into the subject, as I did. If you’d read my earlier posts you’d realise I was talking about the full life cycle of energy use (hence, carbon footprint), from growing the bean to savouring the cup of coffee at the end.
But you seem to be forgetting the raw materials used in making the pods. I don’t know what they’re made of but I guess there must be aluminium in there, amongst other things. Smelting and refining of aluminium ore (bauxite) is highly energy intensive. Most of these materials are effectively lost because most consumers do not return the products (in this case pods) after use. If end of life products are not collected then, even if the recycling process is efficient, material losses are huge.
No I’m not. I’m relaying various articles and studies I have read. In some of those, the aluminium production and high % of disposal in land fill was considered in the life cycle.
I’m am not saying it is clean or has no environmental impact as it clearly does. The point is it is not clear cut and isn’t significantly worse or better than other methods of producing, distributing and making coffee, as far as I have read.
I disagree. I have been an academic researcher in this field for decades. Very few metals are ever recovered and returned to their original pure form and used for the same original function. If the products containing them are collected when they reach the end of life, most are ‘downcycled’ I.e. used for different purposes in impure forms or alloys. The only materials that are effectively recovered by recycling and used as pure metals are those that command high prices, chiefly precious and rare metals such as gold, platinum, palladium, rhenium, etc.
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That may be but something like 90% of the carbon footprint of drinking coffee is in the growing/production and distribution, IIRC. Pods use a lot less coffee (and waste is a lot less) hence the production and disposal of the pods has a lower weighting in the overall calculation of the environmental impact.
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You may be right in what you say regarding the carbon footprint of coffee production itself, but the pods use valuable raw materials that could be used for many other, arguably more worthwhile, purposes. We need to treat such materials in a sustainable manner, using primary resources very carefully and developing much better recycling technology (in a ‘circular economy’).
Regardless, my own preference is to make coffee from freshly ground beans!
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Good point. Opportunity cost is something I haven’t come across as a consideration in the life cycle analysis. Perhaps it should be and that would give a different answer to the overall carbon footprint calcs.
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I was reading an article a couple of weeks ago which claimed that under 30% of coffee pods are recycled, and that 320,000 tons of empty pods go to landfill every year.
Even if 100% pod recycling was achieved, lets be realistic about what this actually achieves for the environment. For many years there has been a widely quoted, and yet widely ignored hierarchy of environmental impact, ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.’ Recycle is at the bottom of this short list because it is less effective than using reusable products, and that in turn is below ‘reduce’ which for obvious reasons is what we actually need to be doing. So by all means congratulate yourself for doing your bit by sending your single use pods off to be recycled, ‘bit’ being the operative word.
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My used coffee pucks go on the garden, as do my tea leaves…where do Nespresso and the like capsules go? I’ve not the faintest idea…but I choose to think my garden benefits. At least, I hope so.
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