German based company, Kaffeeform creates 100% biodegradable coffee cups from coffee grounds.
Julian Lechner, Kaffeeform’s founder, created a company that promotes the principle of a circular economy. The rising consumption of coffee around the world is producing a growing amount of coffee grounds, most of which goes straight into the bin.
The company in 2015 designed cups by reusing coffee grounds, otherwise wasted resources as a raw material.
The concept further helped with environmental sustainability by relying on bike logistics to acquire their coffee grounds. The company travels to different cafes in the Berlin area to gather the grounds needed to produce these cups.
Kaffeeform works with the bike logistics company, Crow Cycle Courier Collective. Each day, the courier company gathers about 110lb of coffee and drops them off at one of 3 different drop off locations. From these drop off locations, the grounds are taken to another facility to be processed.
This process involves mixing the grounds with renewable materials such as grains, natural resins, and plant fibers. This blend is then shaped under high heat and pressure.
A single mug requires 6 cups of coffee grounds. The final product consists of about 40% coffee grounds with the remaining 60% made of renewable raw materials making it 100% biodegradable.
These biodegradable coffee mugs are found in 20 coffee shops across Berlin and in 150 vendors in Europe.