And espresso makers that sit on a gas hob or a hot plate use significantly more energy than a capsule machine does. It found that single-serve coffee uses an exact serving of fresh coffee, which cuts coffee waste, while people making drip coffee often have leftover that they throw away. It’s all very ironic,” he says.Ī study by Quantis compared the electricity consumption during brewing, heating and wasting coffee for single-serve and drip coffee preparation. “So a lot of work is going into making capsules more sustainable - because there is a sales opportunity in making them more sustainable, as people think they are bad - and not because that's actually a really unsustainable way of drinking coffee. People are just focussing on how capsules are killing the planet. “However, if you are an irresponsible consumer, if your drip filter machine is very inefficient, if you leave it on, if you make more coffee than necessary, then you can make drip-filter coffee significantly worse than capsules,” he says.Ĭolonna-Dashwood says that despite the many studies showing that drip coffee and espressos are actually worse for the environment than capsules, the broader public simply doesn’t take any notice. Sebastien Humbert, an expert in life-cycle assessment studies at Quantis, a company that works with many organisations to improve their sustainability, cautions that if you take a responsible consumer - not an average consumer - then it is possible to make drip-filter coffee with less negative impact than capsules, albeit just ever so slightly. The coffee machines only flash-heat the amount of water needed for one portion, unlike, for example, boiling a kettle. Capsules, on the other hand, are more efficient. That’s why barista-made espresso fares so badly in terms of its environmental footprint: a lot of energy is needed to brew just a tiny single espresso cup. Aside from the environmental impact of growing beans in the first place, the second biggest hit is the energy it takes to brew coffee. Hill's research backs up other studies conducted during the past few years, which suggest that capsules are environmentally less harmful than alternative coffee-brewing methods. Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood, a barista and co-owner of Bath-based specialty coffee shop Colonna & Small’s, who collaborates with researchers, says that “instant coffee extracts a lot from the bean, so uses less coffee per cup,” although he adds that it’s not necessarily performing well on other aspects of sustainability.