Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not the identical product but it’s fairly similar. Nespresso accepts their used pods back for recycling, and they are made out of metal and not just plastic, but they are owned Nestle and who knows how well they actually recycle that shit.
They're serious about recycling, but many consumers are not. I'm in Switzerland where recycling Nespresso pods couldn't be easier, and we barely reach a 2/3 recycling rate. US and global rates are much lower. If Nestlé hadn't crippled their machines on purpose, I'd think third party plastic capsules might be a better option in Europe at least, since they end up in waste co-processing.
Nestle invented an entirely new way to brew coffee AGAIN just to extra lock down their pod system from independent competition.
The built all this wankery about spinning the pods at like 30k rpm to "force the water through the coffee like an espresso machine" but it _doesn't_. As Mr Hoffman discussed, the foam it creates is just aerated coffee, which is substantially different than the foam you get from actually putting water through coffee at high pressure. All this to get a patent on a physical process so that competitors cannot drive the price of their pods down.
And the coffee still tastes like shit. And the machine takes a long time. And it makes a stupid and annoying noise. The system is demonstrably worse than any other pod based system because it was more important to Nestle that they get their pod profit margins than you get acceptable coffee.
Like seriously this should be a crime, not a civil infraction, a crime to artificially lock out competition like this.