Along With The Riches Comes Guilt...!

I really don't believe for a moment that when someone invents something that makes them rich that they feel any guilt at all. Even when they find out that the product they invented is totally out of control. Somehow I just can't place rich and guilty together in the mind of most folks.

K-Cups

If any of us had invented a product that was helping to devastate the environment, we might well feel regret about it, and so it is for the inventor of the Keurig pod, more commonly referred to as the K-Cup. The man in question is John Sylvan, who developed the idea for the single-use plastic coffee pods during the early 1990s. The concept ended up being worth billions. The big problem with these pods is that the plastic that is used to manufacture them is not biodegradable and generally can’t be recycled, and thus, it ends up as waste.

As with so many of the other visionaries on this list, Sylvan now argues that he did not realize his invention would become so big in the US that around one in three homes has a machine for the pods—he saw them as something that would only be used in offices. Then again, he also admits that he knew that their easy disposability and the addictive nature of coffee would almost certainly make them a success, so it does seem like he could probably have guessed at the actual outcome.

Don't get me wrong. I like the coffee pods and use them myself from time to time, but I'm not buying his argument that he feels guilty they got so popular and became a problem for the environment. Surly he was smart enough to see the possibility.

Coffee out on the patio this morning. No guilt trips allowed, though.