Keurig Green Mountain last year sold more than nine billion of its traditional single-serve plastic coffee pods — or K-Cups. Precisely zero could be easily recycled.

This inconvenient fact has provoked a decade of hand-wringing within the company, and discontent among consumers. Placed end to end, the pods sold in a year would circle the globe roughly 10 times. Concerns among environmentalists are mounting, and sales growth is slowing.

Now Keurig says it has found a solution. It is taking longer than it took for NASA to put a man on the moon, but in the coming months, the company will begin to sell K-Cups made of material that is easily recycled.

The new K-Cup, composed of polypropylene, gives Keurig an answer to critics who say the company has shown a flagrant disregard for the planet’s well-being. Like common plastic bottles, the new K-Cups can be sorted and shredded by middlemen and sold to manufacturers that use recycled plastic.