Coffee Cups You Can Toss Out On The Ground By Smashing Them
Image via GaeaStar
What if you could get your daily pick-me-up and break stuff too? It does sound like a win-win for workaholics who need to let off steam. Well, a startup called GaeaStar has a food packaging innovation that will let you do that, all while doing the environment a great service.
Yes. Fuel that rage into something positive.
The company, based in San Francisco and Germany, has invented a truly disposable coffee cup that can be smashed onto the ground once you’re done with your drink. The cups are 3D-printed from clay, which, in its simplest form, is made from the earth.
A CNET profile quotes a 2016 study revealing that 50 billion dispensable coffee cups are thrown away in the US each year. It doesn’t matter if they’re paper, plaster, or even compostable—those often turn up in garbage heaps anyway. GaeaStar’s cups, which have emerged triumphant in pilot tests in Berlin coffee and ice cream shops, pander to humans’ desire for convenience and can be discarded even when you’re far away from a trash can.
The cups are constructed from only three ingredients—dirt, salt, and a little water—and thus dissipate into dust at the end of life. Interestingly, they’re inspired by a centuries-old Indian technique that makes accidentally biodegradable containers.
Founder and CEO Sanjeev Mankotia first got the idea for the eco-friendly coffee cups after visiting family in New Delhi, India, and watching his cousin dump out a terracotta cup that was filled with chai. When he pointed out that she was littering, she responded that the cup was made from dirt, “why do you care?”
The traditional containers are, of course, painstakingly crafted by local artisans. Mankotia knew he had to adapt the process for scalability to meet the demands of international markets. That’s when he thought of 3D-printing the cups.
The resulting 3D-printed product is 10 times more resilient than paper cups, GaeaStar says. Mankotia tells CNET he likens the invention to the “fine china experience” of convenience.
He reiterates that the zero-waste cups can be safely disposed of in landfills, or even shattered, since they break down naturally.
But please, do not toss them out of the window or leave shards on pavements. They’re clay, after all—the same material that goes into many flower pots.
Mankotia adds that each eco cup can be printed using 60% less energy than a plastic or paper cup, and at a comparable price too.
The startup is now making its US entrance at Verve Coffee Roasters. Going forward, it hopes to install its patent-pending printers in food and beverage businesses around the country to construct cups on-demand and on site. All it takes is a push of a button, and a cup can be prepared in about 10 seconds.
