The plunger. It's a gift I give to lots of people who are beginning their own houses, that and a grinder. Instantly save so much money on bought coffee. Leftovers make a brilliant cold drink, even without icecream.

Our particular plunger has been with us 33 years, given to us as a gift from Martin, the best of the men who walked with us as we decided to marry. The glass has been replaced a few times but the rest of it is still works as well as it did in January 1983.

But I fear that the era of the plunger – that most resilient of coffee makers – may be about to end. We need to make sure it doesn't.

Last week, I went into two rival supermarket chains and heard precisely the same message from staff. We won't be stocking those any more. We've moved to pods.

At K-Mart, the young man was adamant. Everyone loves George Clooney and his pods. At Target, the same message from a young woman who could not understand why anyone would buy a plunger. Messy. How would you know how much coffee to put in a plunger? Mmmm. The same way I know to put a teaspoon of tea for each person plus one for the pot. You just get the feel.

Coffee pods are a menace. Even the bloke who invented them, John Sylvan, is sorry. And now, the German city of Hamburg has banned coffee pods to try to reduce waste. Of course, it's not banning them from shops – yet – but from state-run buildings as part of an environmental drive, reported the BBC earlier this month which quoted Jan Dube, spokesman of the Hamburg Department of the Environment and Energy, who said: "The capsules can't be recycled easily because they are often made of a mixture of plastic and aluminium."

Damien Giurco, the professor of research futures at the Institute of Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney*, describes coffee pods as bottled electricity, or more precisely, podded electricity.

"And depending on where the aluminium is made, in many cases it will be coming from coal-fired power stations."

So, not good from an environmental point of view then?

He says that while there is some attempt to recycle pods, it's difficult to ensure that waste streams remain pure, uncontaminated.

"And you'd have to argue that it's unnecessary in the first place when there are lower impact alternatives."

So here is this product that we all love because of George but it's ending up as landfill and ocean fill. Shouldn't we stop buying this stuff? Why ditch the reasonably efficient plunger or stovetop for plastic and aluminium?

Says Giurco: "Consumers need to consider [their purchases] but companies also need to consider the impact and not only the use of the product but in thinking about whether there really is the potential to recover, reuse and recycle."

On average, Australians use one coffee pod a week each. Yes, 24 million coffee pods every week; and we can't know exactly how much ends up in landfill because we don't have podtrackers.

Coffee might make us feel sharp but it's also a little like a bad romance - we seem to lose our marbles when we buy coffee; coffee pods are a much more expensive way of getting our caffeine than say my beloved plunger. And what we spend at cafes is a whole other catastrophe of overspending on addictions.

Tom Godfrey, spokesman for Choice, the consumer association, thinks pods are a cult.

"The Nespresso cult comes with a huge environmental cost – and the cost per pod is an expensive way of getting your fix.

"They are convenient but they have an impact," he said.

By the time I've done my reading and interviews about coffee pods I'm absolutely determined to keep plunging. And what do K-Mart and Target say?

When I rang on Monday morning, representatives of both chains said there were no plans to get rid of plungers. One lovely woman even offered to put two aside for me should I need to pop down to the local store. But their response was in sharp contrast to the responses from the shop assistants on the floor, both of whom were emphatic about the move to pods.

Yes, of course pods are convenient, in the same way teabags are convenient. But neither of those options taste all that good. Even the testers at Choice were derisory in their 2013 reviews and again, when looking at machines in 2015. That solid feeling of a cute coloured capsule in your hand delivers just five to eight grams of coffee per cup compared to 11 grams and upwards from your local coffee shop. And I fear that my regular cup at home is around 10g. Ah, I actually know it's that bad.

My favourite ever quote about the coffee industry in general comes from John Rice, now a professor of business at the University of England. He described the coffee industry as "about as sustainable as an ageing Soviet nuclear power plant".

How hard can it be to stop the cult before it's too late? We should all institute a Take Your Plunger To Work Day.

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