K-Cups on a dime
Reuse, reduce, recycle. That motto heard every Earth Day isn’t exactly something bouncing off the kitchen walls when a Keurig brews your morning coffee. The Keurig’s K-cups may be wonderfully convenient, but they are also terribly expensive, non-recyclable plastic.
College kids are notoriously broke and yet so many of us buy K-cups and toss them out after one use. Why not try saving a few bucks and reuse those old K-cups? It’s easy and a great way to enhance that overused motto: Reuse, reduce, recycle, ca-ching!
The Price
Many people are easily fooled into a good deal, and K-cups are no exception. On the surface, a pack of around 16 K-cups is about the same as a bag of coffee, but the amount of coffee is very significant.
Let’s use Starbucks’ House Blend as an example. At the store, a bag of the coffee and a pack of K-cups both cost around $12 (give or take a few dollars based on the retailer). A box of House Blend K-cups contains roughly 6.7 ounces of coffee, while a bag of the same coffee contains 16 ounces of coffee. K-cups don’t even contain half the amount of the ground coffee! In the long run, buying ground coffee for your Keurig can save you more than half the price of buying K-cups. And those few bucks are very significant to a Starbucks junkie.
The Solution
Reusing old K-cups is an easy way to save a few bucks. Simply remove the foil from your used K-cup and rinse out the coffee grounds. Allow the K-cup to dry for a few hours and you are ready to start making your very own.
Gather what you’ll need
Fill the K-cup
Place a few spoonfuls of coffee grounds into your K-cup, filling it up to the brim. Make sure to lightly pack the coffee grounds into the K-cup to help extract flavor. You can even mix different coffee grounds together to create your very own blend of coffee. Make sure when choosing a coffee ground that it is medium ground. This degree of ground size will help the coffee absorb the hot water better and create a flavorful cup. If the ground size is too large it will produce a weak cup. If the ground size is too small, it may leak from the K-cup.
Make a seal
Take your filled K-cup and place a square (or circle) of aluminum foil on top of it. Create a smooth surface with the foil and fold the excess foil around the K-cup as tight as possible. If you have too much foil bunching at the sides, cut some of the excess off so it won’t get stuck in your Keurig.
Make some coffee!
Voila! A homemade K-cup. Now all that’s left is to make a great cup of coffee. Place the K-cup into your Keurig and try your best to align the old puncture hole on the bottom of the K-cup with the needle at the base of the K-cup holder. Close the lid, press the brew button and get ready to enjoy a green cup of coffee. A benefit for both the environment and your wallet.