Crush the Cups

Have I mentioned that I have a pretty serious coffee addiction?  Yes?  Probably a dozen times, at least.  I drink coffee from the minute I wake up until basically dinnertime.  I don't even think the caffeine does anything to me anymore, as I didn't have a problem at all switching to decaf when I was pregnant.  I really like the taste of warm coffee, even if I have to heat it up 75 times a day because kids, you know.  Black coffee is good.  Coffee with a little milk and sugar is even better. And a latte is pure perfection, in my book.  

A few years ago we swapped out our big coffee pot for a Keurig, so Ryan and I could each have our choice of coffee and not have to wait for an entire pot to brew (we're impatient...ok, I'm impatient). Since then we've probably each had 1-2 cups of coffee a day and are madly in love with our machine. He gets to have his strong manly breakfast blend and I get to drink my girly froo-froo flavors and we're both happy.  Coffee = happiness.  Lately Mac has been "helping" us make our morning coffee - he picks out a K-cup for us, pops it in the machine, presses the button and jumps up and down clapping because he's so proud of himself.  It's adorable and makes the whole process so much fun. The love of coffee is going to be strong in this one.

The only thing I don't love about my single-serve coffee experience is the waste.  It breaks my heart to think of all the plastic K-cups we've pitched/recycled.  I read somewhere that all the K-cups used in a year could wrap around the Earth 10 times.  Geez.  That's crazy.  But finally, there's a company that's created individual single-serve coffee pods with WAY less plastic.  May I introduce you to your new best friend - Cameron's Coffee.

When I was first asked to try Cameron's Coffee, my first reaction was, "HELL YEAH, COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE!!!"  I was so damn excited to get to try a new coffee that I missed the entire point of their campaign - better coffee, less plastic, brewed through a filter, no plastic taste.  So I was very pleasantly surprised to find such a cool looking coffee pod, with a filter and very little plastic.  

It fits right in my Keurig, like a regular K-cup, but tastes remarkably better.  Apparently the thin plastic bottoms on the K-cups can let in air and make the coffee stale.  I didn't know that.  And K-cups can also give your coffee a slightly burnt plastic taste.  The Cameron's Coffee pods are sealed in a bag for freshness and use a filter instead of the plastic, so no stale coffee and no burnt plastic taste.  And they come in amazing flavors like Chocolate Caramel Brownie (for me) and Kona blend (for Ryan).  

Cameron's Coffee is promoting a campaign called "Crush the Cups," which runs from December 9 - December 22 where they're encouraging all coffee lovers to upload a video "crushing" a competitor's K-cup to social media (with the hashtag #crushthecups) and submit your link to crushthecups(dot)com before 12/22 and receive a FREE box of Cameron's shipped to your home!  Yes, you read that correctly - FREE COFFEE!!  Oh, and you might win a free trip to Hawaii.  No biggie.

Of course we wanted to take part in the cup crushing as well.  I thought it would be fun to let Mac run over one with his four-wheeler.  Little did I realize that these little buggers are pretty tough and hard to destroy (all the more reason to use the environmentally-friendly filter pods with less plastic).  However, Mac was determined and got the crushing done manually.  Love my little crusher.

(Sorry it's sideways - does anyone know how to fix that?)


*Thanks to Cameron's Coffee for sponsoring this post.  All opinions and love of coffee are my own.  Brute strength, crushing and stomping courtesy of Mac.