Keurig Dr Pepper and Microplastics: K-Cups, Water and Soda

What Keurig Dr Pepper sells, and which parts touch plastic

Keurig Dr Pepper is two businesses in one company: the Keurig coffee system and a North American drinks portfolio that includes Dr Pepper, Canada Dry, 7UP, A&W, Snapple, Core, Bai and Peñafiel, plus partner brands it distributes, such as evian (KDP brands page). The microplastics question looks different for each, so here is the map.

K-Cup pods: what they are made of and the recycling criticism

Keurig’s own recycling page says all K-Cup pods are made from polypropylene, #5 plastic, the same family as yogurt tubs. You peel off the aluminium lid, empty the grounds, and leave the paper filter in. Polypropylene is a common, relatively heat-tolerant food-contact plastic, but it is still plastic, and in a pod it meets near-boiling water under pressure.

Most of the public criticism has been about what happens to the pod afterwards. In January 2022 the Competition Bureau Canada found Keurig Canada’s claims that K-Cup pods are recyclable were false or misleading where they aren’t accepted, noting that outside British Columbia and Quebec pods were not widely accepted in municipal programs. Keurig Canada agreed to a $3 million penalty, an $800,000 donation to an environmental charity, $85,000 in costs and corrective notices. In September 2024 the SEC fined KDP $1.5 million because its 2019 and 2020 annual reports said testing “validate[d]” that pods could be recycled, without disclosing that two of the largest US recyclers had significant concerns. KDP neither admitted nor denied the findings.

Keurig’s page now says pods are “not recycled in many communities” and to check locally, and it flags its California recyclability claims as unresolved. All of this matters for waste. None of it is a test of microplastics in coffee, and it shouldn’t be read as one. The K-Cup and coffee pod guide compares pod construction with Nespresso and reusable options.

Do Keurig coffee makers add microplastics?

The closest evidence is the Al-Mansoori, Harrad and Abdallah study of UK drinks (open PDF). Three home capsule machines gave 17 ± 2, 10 ± 2 and 7 ± 2 particles per cup, counting particles 10 µm and larger. The oldest, an 8-year-old machine with a PET tank, gave the most. The paper did not name the machine brands, and machine age, tank plastic and capsule brand all differed, so this is a clue about wear, not a Keurig number.

Keurig does not publish a full material list for its reservoirs, needles and brew heads. Its new Alta brewer, launched in October 2026, uses pressed coffee rounds without a plastic cup; no particle test has been published for that system either. The Keurig coffee maker page covers the brewer question, the Alta and what to change in your own setup.

Core, Peñafiel and the bottled water question

KDP’s best-known water is Core. Since 2021 its bottles have been made from 100% post-consumer recycled PET, excluding cap and label (BevNET release). Peñafiel is KDP’s Mexican mineral water brand. Neither appears in the 2018 Mason study of 11 brands or in other brand-named counts we reviewed, so there is no Core or Peñafiel figure to report.

Evian is different. It is a Danone water that KDP lists as a partner brand. In the Mason study, Evian’s two lots averaged 197 and 58.2 particles per litre, with a highest bottle of 256/L, near the low end of the 11 brands. Those were bottles bought in 2017, counted mostly in the 6.5–100 µm range. Recycled PET, as in Core, changes where the plastic came from. Whether it changes what the bottle sheds into water has not been settled in the sources we reviewed. The cap is usually the bigger clue: polypropylene, the common cap plastic, was the most frequent polymer in the Mason bottles. See the bottled water brands ranking for every brand with data.

Dr Pepper, Canada Dry and other sodas

KDP sodas come in PET bottles and aluminium cans. Cans have an internal polymer coating, and KDP does not publish its liner chemistry in anything we found, so we won’t guess it. We found no particle test naming a KDP soda. Category studies of soft drinks exist, and the soda microplastics guide explains what they measured and compares cans, PET and glass. Glass is not automatically clean: ANSES found more particles in glass-bottled drinks than in plastic ones and traced them to paint on metal caps.

Use the App

Check the KDP products you actually buy

Scan a pod box, a Core bottle or a soda. The app reads the declared container, cap and liner, shows whether that brand has a published particle test, and suggests a lower-plastic swap. Available on iOS and Android.

Keurig Dr Pepper sustainability claims, evaluated

KDP’s 2025 Commitments Summary reports three packaging numbers: 96% of packaging designed for recyclability, compostability or reuse; 16% post-consumer recycled plastic in primary plastic packaging, on the way to 25% to 35% by 2035; and a 21% reduction in virgin plastic across its packaging portfolio, measured against the baseline in its methodology document.

A fair evaluation is that KDP discloses more about end-of-life than about food contact. It has been penalised twice for overstating recyclability. We found no KDP publication of microplastic testing for its pods, waters or sodas, which is also true of most of its competitors.

The JDE Peet’s deal and what changes

KDP completed its roughly $18 billion acquisition of JDE Peet’s, the maker of Jacobs, L’OR and Peet’s, on April 1, 2026 (Cleary Gottlieb). It plans to split into two listed companies: a North American drinks company, Beverage Co., and a coffee company, Global Coffee Co., which is expected to include Keurig. As of this review the split had not happened. For shoppers, nothing about pod or bottle materials changes on the day of a corporate split; any change would show up on the box.

What would a useful Keurig Dr Pepper test look like?

The missing piece is a matched test, and it is worth knowing what one would involve so you can judge any number that appears later. For pods, it would brew the same coffee and the same filtered water three ways in the same brewer: through a genuine K-Cup, through a stainless reusable filter, and through the machine with no pod at all. Only that design separates the pod from the reservoir, needle and brew head. Repeating it on a new and an old brewer would test the wear question the UK study raised.

For Core or a KDP soda, a useful study would buy several lots from different plants and dates, run blanks, state its lower size limit, and identify polymers so a polypropylene cap fragment can be told apart from a PET bottle fragment or a lab fibre. Counts from methods with different size cutoffs can’t be compared directly: a 10 µm method and a nanoplastic method can differ by thousands of times on the same water. When you see a claim about a KDP product, ask which product, which lot, what size range and who paid for it.

What the evidence does not establish

• A particle count for any named KDP product. The reviewed sources did not include one for K-Cups, Core, Peñafiel or a KDP soda.
• That polypropylene pods are the main source in a cup. The capsule-machine study did not separate pod, machine, water and cup.
• That recycled PET sheds more or less than virgin PET. We found no matched comparison for a KDP bottle.
• A health outcome. The FDA says current evidence does not show that microplastic levels detected in foods pose a risk to human health, while research continues.

What to do if you use Keurig Dr Pepper products

1. Pods: if you want less hot plastic contact, a stainless reusable filter compatible with your model removes the polypropylene cup. Check its seals and fit. It is a material change, not a measured reduction.
2. Brewer: follow the manual for descaling and cleaning. If a machine is many years old and its tank is scratched or cloudy, that is the part worth questioning.
3. Mug: brew into ceramic or glass rather than a plastic-lidded travel cup when you can. The coffee cup guide covers lids and liners.
4. Bottled water and soda: keep bottles cool and out of the sun, and don’t refill single-use PET for weeks.
5. Recycling: check your local program before putting pods in the bin, as Keurig itself now advises.