Coffee Plastic Coffee Cups

What if we were to tell you that the coffee you’re drinking now could, quite feasibly, be used to create the cup that you’re going to drink out of tomorrow? Luckily, this isn’t science fiction: It’s more like science fact.

Research into the potential uses of waste coffee seems to be in vogue at the moment – not that it’s a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. There’s been a fair amount of money that has been siphoned towards coffee grounds becoming a biofuel and now a company based in the United States has created what is effectively a coffee plastic.

“It’s just a way to diversify where coffee waste goes,” says Chad Ulven, the CTO of C2Renew, the company behind the composite.

“For sustainability, we need to think about that in everything we do. By utilising coffee was in a different way and repurposing it into new products.”

C2Renew have teamed up with 3dom, a firm that specialised in 3D printing technology to bring it to market.

The plastic is brown (naturally, what other colour would it be?) and has what is described as a ‘grained’ appearance, something which we think will enamour itself with the hordes of hipsters, and can be printed in a wide range of designs.

The coup de grace may be the coffee cup and the soon-to-be released travel mug, but the bioplastic can be used to create almost anything.

“We are also incorporating coffee into other products,” Ulven says.

“We’re using coffee in other plastics with varying concentrations.”

So if you want a business card holder made from this coffee infused plastic then that won’t be a problem.

The C2Cup, the coffee cup made from coffee, can be backed on Kickstarter