We all know how our oceans are choking from plastic. This is a menace which seems to have no end! Single-use plastic is one of the most time-consuming things to get rid of, yet their use doesn’t seem to slow down. So what does a boy from Germany do to save the planet from the devil of the single-use coffee cups?
Kaffeeform is the start-up company of Julian Lechner from Berlin, where they use coffee grounds to make reusable coffee cups.
While we all enjoy our cuppa, the United States alone generates 120 billion single-use coffee cups every year. So imagine the waste generated with the whole world consuming their share of coffee, not only generating the non-biodegradable cups but also heaps of coffee grounds.
In 2009, while studying product design, Lechner noticed how much coffee he and his peers consumed daily. The average person in Germany consumes as much as 14pounds of coffee beans yearly. Almost 99% of all coffee cups are turned to the trash and even paper cups may take more than 20 years to properly decompose.
So Lechner planned to reuse the disposed of coffee grounds to produce eco-friendly coffee cups. Not just Kaffeeform, another startup, Crow Cycle Courier Collective, is also involved in this mission of saving the planet. The Collective gathers nearly 110 pounds of coffee grounds each day which is then cleaned in Kaffeeform workshops.
They are then sent to a different facility to dry and blend with things like plant fibers, natural resins, and beechwood grains. Intense pressure and heat compress 6 cups of coffee grounds to make one cup and saucer. The finished products are 100% biodegradable and 40% coffee grounds.
Lechner’s success lies in how 20 of Berlin’s coffee shops use his products along with 150 odd vendors throughout Europe. The future for the company lies in Lechner’s vision of producing not just cups but to extend into furniture and lifestyle product production. And to think, it’s all from the remains of our coffee!
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