What's a Coffee Lover To Do?

It was almost a year ago I was fretting about whether to include paper coffee filters on my Green List as an unnecessary contribution to landfills. It was on, then off, but now I see the bigger picture. Coffee does consume a large amount of your household resources because Americans make a lot of coffee at home. Most recently I was concerned about the amount of water required to clean out a permanent filter, and that the paper filter, together with the used grounds, could be composted in the garden. I tried to follow through on composting coffee and filters, but the paper doesn't decompose fast enough for me.

It was my new "thermal" coffee carafe I started using that eventually turned my head. I was really surprised how warm the coffee stayed without any hot base on the coffee maker. The coffee was still too hot to touch after three hours.

While coffee makers don't really use that much energy, the difference between the keep-hot maker vs. the thermal carafe is considerable, in the 1,000% plus range...and more for an all-morning coffee sipper like me. The water is a small issue when you can get big energy savings with a thermal carafe, stop consuming and disposing paper filters, and recycle the grounds in the garden. It's coffee without guilt!