As a former barista and insufferable coffee snob, I long believed coffee pod machines were beneath me. My kitchen cupboards are like a museum dedicated to the pursuit of extracting caffeine from a bean, from cold drip to Moka Pots, Aeropress to Vario. No method was too time consuming or pretentious for me to try.

But over the last few years, my attitude toward pod machines has softened. After using them in various hotels and conference centres, I had to admit the taste had improved. More importantly, my two-year-old doesn't have the patience for me to perform a fancy coffee routine each morning, so it was either her or the coffee, and I’ve grown quite fond of her.

But as much as I was willing to give pods a chance, there was still the problem of waste. Pod-based coffee makers are incredibly wasteful compared to any other form of brewing. So before settling on a machine, I did some research.

In Australia, the market is dominated by Nespresso, which make up around 80 per cent of the coffee pod market. Aldi’s Expressi comes in a distant second, but its much cheaper machines still have their fans.

Nespresso customers can recycle used pods at more than 19,000 locations in Australia, or send them back through specially designed Australia Post satchels. Aldi launched a recycling program last June, but soon after shut it down due to "greater than anticipated" demand, and provide no information on whether this program will recommence. I contacted Aldi before publishing, but they had no further information to add. And thanks to Nespresso’s market dominance, there are far more third party reusable pod solutions. Nespresso seemed the only choice for those wanting an environmentally friendly pod coffee. For the purposes of this experiment, I ordered the well-reviewed Nespresso Lattissima.