Category Archives: From the Lab

Savenia Labs Turns 4 Years Old!

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Savenia Labs was started 4 years ago to provide energy and environmental impact information to shoppers so they could make better and more informed decisions.

Screen Shot 2013-03-18 at 11.57.00 AMIn the last year the company has grown the number of rated product categories from 3 to 10, and now has 650+ products in the ratings database.  We have also grown the number of retail store partners using our Energy Rating Labels six-fold to 13 stores across 3 states.  These forward thinking stores reach 1 million people, are within driving distance of 9 million DC metro region shoppers, and are leading a nation of 310 million people to energy and environmental savings.

We also launched our retail portal that allows stores across the country to download zip code customized energy rating labels, training materials, and more.

Savenia Labs and our partner stores have been featured on every major network. Reporters, including an Emmy award winner, from ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX told our story to millions. We’ve appeared in the Washington Post and in countless local and regional publications. Communities have tuned in to hear about us on leading regional radio news networks. Our media success has helped change the way buyers shop everywhere we go.

There is still lots of work to do: more categories, more geographies and more customers to serve…so stay tuned!

Thanks to all of our partners, stakeholders and followers for your continued support!

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What’s Inside a Single Serve Coffeemaker Pod?

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Single Serve coffeemakers are among the hottest holiday items this year, and chances are you’ll buy one, get one as a gift or get served a cup from one in the next month.

Savenia Labs is set to release the world’s first independent lab tested energy ratings on this popular category soon.  While energy usage drives much of their environmental footprint, the waste created from used pods also has a big impact.

Lots of single serve coffeemakers have entered the market with many different types of coffee pods.  As each works a little differently, we’ve assembled a guide on the five most popular types to help you with your holiday shopping.

To set the stage – the average person will spend over $3,000 on coffee pods and supplies over the 5 year lifetime of the unit.  Lined up side by side, the used pods alone would stretch across 3 football fields.  So which pod system you buy is pretty important.

K Cups

By far the most popular pod-based coffeemakers out there use the Keurig K Cups.  There are 268 varieties of K Cups available on Keurig’s website.  The pods are not recyclable, but Keurig provides a reusable cup that can be used to save money and waste.  The K Cups are tall, rounded plastic cups with a small paper filter at the bottom.  Your favorite coffee fills the rest of the cup above the filters.  Hot water is fed through a hole pierced in the top of each cup, through the filter, and through another hole pierced in the bottom right into your mug.  Keurig models and partner models based on Keurig K Cup technology like Cuisinart and Mr. Coffee all use K Cups.

CBTL Capsules

Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf has a slightly different design from the ubiquitous K Cup.  We found 25 varieties on The Coffee Bean’s website.  The cups are not recyclable, and we couldn’t find refillable cups for sale.  But the CBTL model we tested used much higher water pressure to handle espresso, and the small plastic capsules contain a plastic sieve to evenly distribute this higher pressure water before it gets to your mug.  The coffee is packed below that sieve and above another filter at the bottom of the packet.

T Discs

Tassimo single serve coffeemakers use T Discs.  There are 62 varieties available directly from Tassimo.  These are not widely recyclable and we couldn’t find refillable discs available.  T Discs appear to be much more intensively designed with thicker, stronger plastic channeling water through tunnels of coffee before filtering into your mug.  These use low pressure to brew a variety of coffees and beverages.  Uniquely, each T Disc includes a barcode at the top that triggers automatic brew settings to customize the brewing process.

Nescafe Dolce Gusto

DeLonghi’s Dolce Gusto coffeemakers use Nescafe Dolce Gusto Capsules.  There are 22 capsule varieties available from Nescafe.  These are not widely recyclable and there are no refillable capsules available.  From the outside, these look quite similar to K Cups but each has a permeable membrane in the middle of the capsule to enable high water pressure brew of every cup.  According to Delonghi, the machine pushes water at a pressure of 15 bars through the membrane.  They claim this approximates the pressure found in coffee house machines.

Bunn/Senseo Coffee Pads

Bunn’s MC My Café and Senseo’s Single Serve Coffeemakers use coffee pads that are quite a bit different than any other on the market.  Instead of a plastic cup as in most other systems, they use coffee filter-like paper pads that enclose the coffee.  These pads are compostable, and you can also buy refillable versions to fill with your own coffee at home without the waste (and cost). Neither the Bunn nor the Senseo push high water pressure through these pads.  Newer Bunn models also use K Cups.

Which system you buy depends on what’s important to you.  If you’re an espresso drinker, you want a high water pressure system and the options for refillable / recyclable pods are limited.  For regular coffee and other ‘non-pressure’ drinks, there are several options for you to buy, recycle or re-fill depending on your needs.

Be sure to check out our other blogs on single serve coffeemakers, including The Competition, The Consumer, The Costs and The Environment.  And look out for the release of Savenia Labs Energy Rating Labels on popular single serve coffeemakers…in stores soon!

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Single Serve Coffeemaker Confidential Part IV – The Environment

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The Environment

We focused on 2 aspects of the environmental impact of single serve coffeemakers – electricity consumption and waste from used cups / pods. Extra electricity usage in the home leads to higher energy costs, and results in power plant energy production leading to air pollution. Non-recyclable single serve coffee cups / pods produce plastic waste over the product’s lifetime that can end up in landfills.

Energy-  We found the most energy hungry units used more than 10x the energy of the most efficient units, equaling hundreds of dollars over the life of the machine. A big issue here is standby power, as many of these machines keep water hot for 24 hours unless powered off.

Waste-  The average single serve unit owner who drinks 3 cups of coffee per day over 5 years would use enough disposable pods to stretch across 3 football fields. By using refillable pods, you can cut down on that waste, but lose the convenience many Americans demand. Some machines come with recyclable or compostable pods – so keep an eye out for those options.

For only a few cups of coffee a day, some single serve coffeemakers can save energy, offer more drink variety and produce faster results than an electric drip coffeemaker. On the other hand these units can produce lots of plastic waste. At larger quantities, an energy efficient 10-12 cup machine can produce coffee at a more efficient per cup rate – if you make and drink a full pot. Higher usage environments are likely to do better, environmentally speaking, with energy efficient 10-12 cup coffeemakers, albeit with less convenience and drink variety. Lower usage environments may do better with a single serve machine with regard to energy consumption, although each machine is slightly different.

Please see our blog on Ownership Costs to factor this in to your buying decision.  And stay tuned for our release of Savenia Labs Energy Ratings on SIngle Serve Coffeemakers.  In stores soon!

Single Serve Coffeemaker Confidential Part III – The Costs

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Coffee drinking can be an expensive habit.  A small simple cup from Starbucks will cost you $1.75 per day, while a fancier palette could run you $4 or more.  If you buy 3 cups per day (the average amount of coffee Americans told us they drink per day), that’ll run you between $1,900 and $4,400 per year.  Over five years, a continuous Starbucks habit would run from $9,500 to $22,000 depending on how expensive your tastes are.

With single serve machines the costs are spread out among many different pieces.  The machines themselves cost anywhere from $50 to $200 depending on local prices and rebates.  The coffee pods can run from 50 cents up to a couple bucks each; that adds up pretty quickly since many consumers drink 3 or more of these per day.  These pods alone will cost you $2,700 to $11,000 over the coffeemaker’s 5 year lifetime.  Lastly, maintenance on the product can add up when you change the water filter every 3 months and buy de-scaling solutions to keep the unit clean.  Assuming you buy the lower cost pods, altogether this can add up to $3,000 or more over the 5 year lifetime of the unit… and this is before you get to the energy cost of running the unit. Choose wisely.

Brewing coffee in either a traditional coffeemaker or in reusable pods can cost far less in coffee used.  That’s assuming you make only the coffee you will drink with no waste. The Specialty Coffee Association of America recommends using 10 grams of ground coffee to make one 6 ounce cup of joe.  Conservatively, to make three 8-ounce cups per day at $10 per pound bag prices (about the price of a 1-pound Starbucks bag on Amazon), you would spend $1,610 over the coffeemaker’s 5 year lifetime on ground coffee.  That’s over $1,100 less than you’d spend if you bought the cheapest coffee pods on the market.  But making the coffee yourself is certainly much less convenient, far messier, and lacking in the incredible variety of drinks these pods now offer.

Increasingly, Americans are finding the extra convenience well worth the price – single serve coffeemakers are by far the fastest growing coffee segment in the country.

Stay tuned for our next post in the series on the environmental perspective.

Single Serve Coffeemaker Confidential Part II – The Consumer

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The Consumer

Savenia Labs surveys thousands of consumers to understand how they use products, and we use this information to create ‘real-life’ lab test protocols to replicate how the average user normally runs the product.

Our survey of single serve coffee machine users found that most people still bought the machines in stores as opposed to online. Almost 25% got them as gifts.  And while many people buy other small appliances because their old one broke, we found most people bought their single serve coffeemakers because they wanted to switch to single serve. And they love their coffee, with 77% reporting use their machine 7 days per week and drinking about 3 cups of mostly coffee each day.

Armed with this information, we go now to the testing laboratory to put these coffeemakers to the test.

Stay tuned for our next report on the costs of ownership.

Single Serve Coffeemaker Confidential Part I – The Competition

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Single Serve Coffeemakers are the fastest growing appliance category in the multi-billion dollar coffee market. So in the run-up to the coffee drinking season, we decided to put the most popular models through our 10 step laboratory process. Follow along with us as we test, prod, taste and rate our way through the competition.

The Competition

We chose 10 of the most popular models according to our survey of US large retailers. Not surprisingly, Keurig has a dominant share of the market, with several models in our top 10. Keurig is owned by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, a NASDAQ traded company headquartered in Vermont.

The Keurig brand got a head start in the market by introducing its Keurig brewers first and licensing its brewer technology to other manufacturers like Cuisinart and Mr. Coffee. Its K-Cups are the leading disposable coffee drinks widely available from major coffee suppliers and retailers nationwide.

The other American in the bunch is Bunn, famous for their commercial coffee makers in restaurants and offices but also with a big share of home electric drip coffeemakers.

Then there are the Europeans. Germany’s Bosch makes Tassimo, Italy’s Delonghi makes Dolce Gusto with pods from Switzerland’s Nestlé, and the Netherlands’ Philips and Douwe Egberts make Senseo.

As you might expect, at first glance the Americans tend to be focused on simpler drip-type drinks like American coffee, tea and others while the Europeans tend to use a high water pressure approach to deliver creamy espresso and other coffee drinks in the European style.

Stay tune for the next report – on The Consumer

 

Single Cup vs. Classic Coffeemaker Throwdown

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With single cup (Keurig type) coffeemaker sales growing rapidly, we are often asked about the energy efficiency of these machines vs. standard drip coffeemakers. Many people have a 10-12 cup drip coffeemaker at home and we wanted to see if they could save energy / money moving to a single serve unit. We did some exploratory work with the Bosch Tassimo TAS6515, and while not representative of the whole category, it’s an interesting starting point for the discussion.

Our initial results showed that brewing around 8 cups of coffee per day with the Tassimo used about the same amount of energy as brewing a full 10-12 cup pot with the average coffeemaker we tested. The most efficient drip coffeemakers brewed a pot using the energy of 4 cups, while the least efficient always-on hot water varieties were much more energy hungry.

If you drink a full 12 cup pot of coffee every day and have an average drip coffeemaker – you’d use less energy by sticking with it. If you drink less than around 8 cups a day, you would probably save energy by switching to the Tassimo.

Of course energy use is not the whole story here. The single serve coffeemakers also produce waste in the form of used cups / cartridges…some of which can be recycled or re-used. On the other hand – they make coffee much faster, don’t leave coffee sitting around and provide other drink options like tea, hot chocolate.

We look forward to testing the entire category soon and presenting the whole story. Do you have a single serve coffeemaker…how do you like it?

 

3 Energy Saving Tips On Turkey Day

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With Thanksgiving Day just around the corner here are a few tips from the lab on how to save money and energy in the kitchen this year.

1. Toaster Ovens – Batch, Shut-off and Convection.

We found that the vast majority of a toaster oven’s energy consumption goes towards getting it warm in the first place.  Once it’s warm, it doesn’t take a lot of energy (or time) to keep it there.  So heat the rolls, then the batch of cookies, then the pumpkin pie.  Just do it without letting the toaster oven get cold over and over again.  Also, many toaster ovens don’t automatically turn off after use.  Make sure to switch them off to minimize energy usage and for safety.   Finally, if you have a good convection toaster oven use it.   In many cases this feature can save time and potentially energy.  In our tests, they made cookies fluffier too – and who doesn’t love fluffy cookies?

2. CoffeeMakers – Go Thermo

One of the biggest drivers of energy usage in a coffeemaker is the heat plate it uses to keep your coffee warm.  If you’re in need of a new coffeemaker – consider getting one with a thermo-carafe.  It keeps your coffee warm longer without using any additional energy.  And besides, those heat plates can destroy flavor.

3.  Microwave Ovens – Zap Away

If you need to heat something quickly – zap it.  Your microwave is one of the best conservers of energy in your kitchen.  Use microwave safe containers and covers.

Strosniders True Value Hardware in Bethesda and Silver Spring has all these appliances and more with Savenia Labs Energy Rating Labels so you can see the energy costs BEFORE you buy!

Have a happy holiday!

$3.5m Halloween Porch Lights – Now That’s Scary!

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$3.5 million. That’s how much we estimate Americans who still use traditional bulbs will spend tonight from 6-9pm on their incandescent porch lights for trick-or-treaters. The power plants that produce this electricity will fill 350,000 gasoline tanker trucks with air pollution over this 3 hour period. If Americans switched to CFL lights the numbers drop by 75%, and the bulbs last 8x longer. Now that’s a real treat for Halloween!

Addendum November 2 2011

After this post we received a number of questions, comments from consumers who had problems with CFL lights breaking before the end of their advertised life. We did some research on this and found that all Energy Star qualified light bulbs are required to offer a manufacturer warranty of 2 years to consumers. (For more information click here: http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=cfls.pr_cfls_warranty). You may need to keep your receipt to take advantage of these warranties – contact your retailer or the manufacturer for details.

Prices for more efficient light bulbs have fallen dramatically over the past few years so you can now get a CFL for under $2 each (for a 60 watt equivalent).

 

Why People Buy Coffeemakers in the Fall

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It’s that time of year again…fall appliance sales have begun and for some reason people buy more coffeemakers during fall months. But why? It would seem that people drink coffee all year round. So why do sales spike in Fall? Savenia Labs research into small appliances and interviews with thousands of consumers may provide a clue.

The vast majority of people (80%) purchase coffee makers because their last unit broke. Another 20% want more features – time for an upgrade. And while 70% bought their home coffee makers, another 20% got them as a gift. So the answer could be simple – gift givers are gearing up for the holiday season and colder weather causes coffee drinkers to brew up more often – leading to more broken machines.

So as we enter the coffee maker season, where are you going to buy your new coffee maker? Over 80% of our survey respondents told us they buy them in retail stores – vs. 15% online. If you’re in the market, Strosniders True Value Hardware in Bethesda and Silver Spring has a sale on all Savenia Labs Energy Rated appliances including coffeemakers, toaster ovens and microwaves now through October 31st (see flyer here). These are the only stores in the world where you can find out and compare how much it costs to power these appliances BEFORE you buy. Don’t get stuck with the unit that costs $500 to operate because you didn’t know. To find a store near you go to www.savenialabs.com.