Offices and pod coffee

I've noticed that various offices have taken to having pod coffee... my office recently switching to keurig.... this is very wasteful (both financially because individually wrapped coffee pods are more expensive and environmentally because they're individually wrapped).

But what's the alternative? The main ones offered currently are coffee shops, pot coffee, and other non-conventional (in the US) forms of single brew (french press, cold brew...). All of these have negative elements to an office's needs.

• If you don't provide coffee, your employees now are missing out on a perk that competitors have.  Worse still, if they decide to go to a coffee shop, you're essentially promoting a transition out of the office which is costly in efficiency.
• If you go with only having pot coffee available, while this is at least a little bit closer to the common scenario, it's not going to be quite the perk that is expected by your employees because they can't pick and choose and personalize their coffee selection.

So, I get it... there are certainly reasons why companies are all converting to pod coffee of one fashion or another.  Taking that as a given, maybe there's an option that would allow for something more economical, environmental, AND providing the same perks we've come to expect in the office? I know it sounds ridiculously inefficient, but, I've been thinking about the reusable pods available for keurig.  I don't think people would accept filling their own reusable pods, but, what if someone at the office were to be responsible for filling the pods, in similar fashion to someone currently being in charge of stocking them?  

• I can imagine having a small device for holding several pods at a time while their filled, making it slightly more efficient than when a person fills one pod.
• You could get different flavors and mark different reusable pods as each flavor, thus allowing the same diversity as is available today.
• For the most environmentally concerned companies, the remains of the coffee grounds could be composted instead of just tossed in the trash. 

The main problems I foresee with this plan are that you need someone to take a bit more time with stocking the coffee and that you would want some way to keep the freshness of the grounds in place once placed in the reusable pod.  For the former, I'm not really sure what can be done aside from using tools to make the process of resetting the pods quicker, such as the aforementioned holder for holding the pods while refilling or a funnel for the same part of the process.  For maintaining freshness, I wonder if you could get a rubber cap to put over the pod.

Looking just at my office, I expect there would be a decent start-up cost but that it would pay for itself relatively quickly.  Let's say you expect to need 24 cups of each of 12 varieties per day.  

• You would need around 288 reusable pods; $10 for 4 pods; $720
• 12 bags of coffee; let's say $8/bag; $96
• Miscellaneous equipment such as funnel... let's say $50?

Total: ~$870 (assuming you already have a keurig, given that we're replacing the current offering...if that Keurig machine already in place is based on a service provider, then we're adding a Keurig to bring us to about $925-$975)

So, yes, that's a large starting point but consider the financial savings of such an arrangement.  That 12 bags of coffee covers roughly 360 cups of coffee, or around $225 worth of Keurig cups.... so you can see how a savings of $130 nearly every day would cover that initial investment into the reusable pods real quick.... the initial investment would be covered within 2 weeks.

What are your thoughts?  Do you work in an office where lots of pods are used?  Do you think the office could make the switch?