Make it easier to be green, one cup of coffee at a time

Last year, I bought my wife a Nespresso coffee machine for her birthday.

In case you are not familiar with them, this type of coffeemaker makes an absolutely perfect espresso coffee with no mess and no cleanup. You fill the tank with water, load the coffee capsule into the top, and push a button. That’s it.

As long as you keep the tank filled and empty the used capsules, you are in business. Without a shadow of a doubt, my wife and I are drinking at least 25 percent more coffee than we were previously. The ease of operation has removed any roadblock that existed previously to making coffee whenever the hankering emerges.

Last week, I was flying with a good friend and business associate of mine, Chris Jones, who, halfway between New York and Las Vegas, proceeded to tell me about a garbage chute that was in his first apartment in Manhattan. It looked like a normal chute but had a dial above it with four settings: paper, glass, aluminum and waste. To operate, you turned the dial to the type of garbage you were disposing of, opened the door and threw it in. Instead of having multiple smelly bins in a closet or on your floor, you had one chute, which took care of all. Chris said to me that because the system was so easy, he automatically started becoming more conscientious about his recycling.

On my flight back to New York, I began to think about the coffee machine and my friend’s garbage chute and the similarity between the two. No, I’m not going mad. They are both inventions that make everyday tasks easier. As a result of both being introduced into our homes, both coffee making and recycling were being done more often. These machines made these tasks simpler, and thus facilitated the spread of people doing those tasks.

I then thought about this principle and how it might relate to the green movement and tasks associated with it. Recycling, carpooling, bringing your own bags to the supermarket—all of these are essential to certain aspects of keeping the planet healthy, yet all are done a lot less frequently than they should be. The reason being is that they take you out of your normal schedule and routine.

Sure, the conscientious people who feel good about being green never forget, but I’m sure the majority of normal folk remember only about half the time, if that.

Relating these tasks to my beloved Nespresso coffee machine, it would seem that somehow we need to make these tasks, and thus all green tasks and responsibilities, easier if we want them to become more widely used. It’s a simple recipe: In order to make green habits the norm, we need to make being green fun and simple.

Relying on people’s intellect and responsibility to mother Earth is not going to be good enough. Green needs to become easy.

So while there are countless people out in the world spending lots of time and energy figuring out how to save the planet through resource management and conservation, I want to encourage the industrialists and inventors as well. Their help is needed equally as much. If someone can make it as easy as Nespresso does to make a cup of coffee, then surely someone can make the act of recycling fun and effortless.

Any ideas? Then let’s all get to work!