Redesigning the Coffee Cup

58 billion paper cups are thrown away - and are not recycled - every year. In a contest hosted by Jovoto, and partly sponsored by Starbucks and Core77, the Betacup project has the goal to find the best ideas to eliminate paper cup consumption. What could be a more sustainable alternative? This entry, by Miller Creative, solves this problem, in a realistic, manufacturable, and eco-friendly way. Check it out below.

The Brief:

"Rethink the way we consume coffee and present solutions that strive to reduce paper cup waste. We are not looking for just another reusable cup design. Think beyond just the vessel for carrying coffee, and develop a way to cause behavior change at a massive scale."

Miller Creative's Solution:

"The Radial Fin Cup is an attempt to improve the typical coated, rolled and glued coffee cup with a plastic lid, and satisfy coffee shop owners, consumers and the the environment alike. This is a tough call.

Retailers want low cost and happy customers. Customers want ease-of-use, convenience and cleanliness. The environment needs us to come up with sustainable ways to drink our daily coffee.

We felt avoiding reusables was important since consumers at large are not likely to reuse their cups. (Convenience factor.)

A disposable cup that doesn't cost a lot more than the current model would be ideal. Eliminating extra materials was also key. We came up with a sleeveless cup that is sustainable and 100% biodegradable. Some carefully considered improvements make this idea very attainable in the real world.

The design incorporates fins to allow for insulation from the cup surface without adding an extra sleeve.  A PLA (polylactic acid) lid is improved by making it more recognizable as non-recyclable. (It is 100% biodegradable, and often gets confused with plastic.)"

Vote for Miller Creative's design here, and check out the other designs here.

 

Editors Note: Yael Miller of Miller Creative is also a contributor to The Dieline. Her involvement in The Dieline had nothing to do with with this being featured. I saw it in a tweet, and loved the design, and then realized she had a part in the design. I firmly believe this is one of the, most innovative, easily manufacturable, and implementable solutions, but I highly encourage you to view them all.

Comments

[Liz]

Hi, Paper is a renewable and biodegradiable source, instead of having paper thrown away they have something else thrown away, which doesnt solve the problem at all. Why not have recycling stations down the main streets for paper instead? what a waste of money this is!

[Design ideas]

Nice

[FranticCut]

Maybe an improvement is better. So with the next invention an improvement can be made on the previous improvement. But yea, it does not completely solve the problem.

[carotte]

I'm not talking about the form or anything, but how does this even answer the brief? : "Think beyond just the vessel for carrying coffee, and develop a way to cause behavior change at a massive scale.".Sure, it's biodegradable (but under certain conditions, it doesn't mean it will break down in a landfill ), that's not changing anything to the curent problem.The use of fins is quite clever, albeit probably not very confortable.People won't change their behavior, they'll only ponder what trashcan it's suposed to go in and will probably put it in the wrong one.

[Gwenithogagog]

Uncomfortable fins? Are you mad! It's the old bed of pins theory..I agree with you on all other points.

[Wade]

Insulated cups are nice. They keep your fingers from getting too hot, and also keep the drink hot. These fins will act like cooling fins to speed up the cooling of the drink. Probably not a benefit.

[tod]

This doesn't improve on anything... how is it better than a traditional paper cup made from renewable and responsibly managed forests, and a PLA coating, made from compostable corn based plastics? The cooling fins eliminate all branding and advertising real estate, and, other than looking cool, offer questionable function. This smacks of the American Idol "save the world" campaign in which their recommendation was to use fewer paper napkins, and if you have extra, keep them in your car for later. Bingo, the world has been saved by napkin reduction and now funny shaped molded cups. Now they can fly contestants around in private jets feeling good about their reduced napkin consumption.

[Roni]

I think one solid merit of this design is that is eliminates the need for a paper sleeve, and therefore cuts back on excess packaging.Branding and advertising space would just need to get a little creative in order to work around the insulating structure.

[patty]

I like it. I agree with carotte in that they didn't exactly answer the prompt, but I think it's a nice design solution for a simpler prompt of just a better coffee cup. I'm a huge fan of molded pulp. It almost doesn't even matter if the cup will biodegrade or not, because unlike most cup materials now, pulp is almost entirely refuse paper products. So the the vessel's materials will have already served one cradle-cradle cycle. I dig the elimination of those stupid sleeves too, they never stay on.

[BrandonT]

I though of that as well, but the fins are made out of a fiber material that is a good insulator. The fins would not speed up the cooling of the beverage.

[Trevor]

Where will all the advertising a graphics go on this cup? The reality is starbucks is going to want to print all over it as will other companies and Im not sure this is possible on this cup. People will still throw this in a trash not the recycle bin. People don't like using reusable is a correct claim as stated, but what if that is their only option? Think of the cities who have eliminated plastic bags, now they have no choice but to choose the greener option. We need to eliminate the disposable cup all together.

[Diego]

Aren't regular paper cups "biodegradable" as well? What about communication? Molding bagasse or other natural fibers would consume much more pulp/energy to achieve satisfactory resistance levels, did you really take any time to evaluate this?It frightens me how these kind of environmental pseudo-achivements are communicated everyday. Why not getting some info before designing? Results may not be that cute, but may end closer to the target.

[Nichole M.]

It looks great, I agree that the elimination of the paper sleeve is the only strong point though.

What is the environmental impact on the manufacturing of the materials used to make it?

Isn't using something made from corn just supporting the awful GMO pseudo-corn industry anyway?

This may help, but people should be encouraged to use washable/re-useable mugs anyway. People may take this as a cue that it's ok to just keep making more trash.

[J. Major]

I tried to reuse a cup at Starbucks but they said that they "have" to give me a new one, it's a health code violation for them to take my filthy contaminated cup behind the counter and into their otherwise sterile workspace. [/sarcasm]

But seriously, the change has to be made at the large-scale corporate level and if it's using even a small fraction fewer resources then it's at least a step in the right direction. Not using glues or adhesives is great, but only if it's not offset by something else...like the clearing of forests to plant fields of sugar cane so they can use the pulp to make coffee cups. Or more fossil-fuel-intensive production of corn for the PLA lids. Almost everything has a hidden cost in resources, it's not solving anything to just move from one substrate to another without considering the overall impact.

That being said, I think the fins are a great way to avoid the extra sleeve component. Seems like it would work.

[Alex]

Nice to see clever thoughtful design. Takes away the surface graphics and I guess concentrates on the fundamentals!

[Yael Miller]

Thanks for taking the time to comment. Lots of good points (many of which are discussed on Jovoto).

A note about our choice of PLA: the original concept (shown here) does suggest the use of PLA for the lid and an attempt to make it more recognizable as a non-recyclable (yet compostable) material. We then later realized that a food crop used for plastic isn't a really good choice. So, point well taken. We'd probably approach the lid a different way.

Our hope is for the Betacup team (and their major partner, Starbucks) to formulate a 3-pronged approach to the challenging brief of changing the wastefulness of disposable coffee cups. The Radial Fin cup is intended to solve only part of the problem. A longer-term evolution will hopefully take place. But, in the meantime there is still a need for disposable cups (consumer behavior is tough to uproot forcefully and not wise from a business perspective). We hope that a paradigm shift will take place by incorporating a motivation program and smart reusable options to work in tandem with an idea like ours.

Again, thanks for weighing in :)

Yael

[Peter Torbay]

All these comments are kind of a sad indictment why our society is just now sitting down at the table, 50 days after the greatest environmental catastrophe since the Hanford Reservation plutonium leaks (snark), to deal with the BP blowout oil spill. NO FOCUS!!Come on, it's a great design, eliminates those cup sleeves waste, circular graphics can be printed on a PLA ribbon above the fins, and as for the rest of the 'green ecotopia from 30,000 feet' opines how "we (sic) have to move towards (sic) non-disposables", get a life!The world will always need disposable chop sticks, cups, trays and biofuel as our supply of nonrenewable petroleum gets scarce.

[Nichole M.]

I think that was pointed out by myself as well as others that the sleeve elimination was great. You are off to a good start, and I really enjoy the colors.

It is obvious that disposable things will always be needed, but carrying a mug WHEN POSSIBLE does help the overall trash issue.

I think our society has sat down to the table long ago. It's the large companies and their bribes that keep our system on a dangerous path. Most of society knows we need a paradigm shift. Sadly there are still many that don't.

[Heather]

I think this is a good step. obviously not everyone will carry a reusable cup, no matter how much they are told they should. And even if there are recycling bins close by, people still for some reason don't always use them. So for the percentage of cups that still get thrown in the trash, amounts to a good time in a landfill. So having something biodegradable is the next best idea to try to limit the amount put into those landfills.

[Mandira]

Just a different point of view- I am from India and we do not yet have the culture of 'take away' coffee. Sure, there are a rising number of coffee shops here, but almost everyone goes there to sit down and have a nice cuppa, served in nice ceramic cups/ mugs. It seems to me that the answer is to slow down, take time out to sit and enjoy the coffee- instead of rushing around trying to drink it on the go. ...but I don't know - maybe everyone's just too busy these days.

[Ryan]

How do you plan on selling this into retailers? when there is no room for prominent branding? without the addition of a sleeve which contradicts its purpose.

[Evelio]

Great dialogue, that would not have happened without this design. Now back to the drawing board for the next iteration.

[Andy]

The cooling fins do work (I have a ceramic cup with them) and it is a positive to eliminate the sleeve, but PLA is not heat-resistant (or at least it wasn't as of six months ago when I got out of the packaging industry). PLA melts easily at the temperatures to which a coffee cup lid is subjected. One sip would likely melt the lid and send a jet of scalding hot coffee into the drinker's face. There is also much controversy regarding PLA and its environmental claims. It's producer will not give a straight, consistent answer or commit to any of the claims regarding its contents, its compostability and the ease of its disposal process.

[Andy]

Going along with that, the last time I did a job with PLA, the answer was a definite 'no' to putting the word 'biodegradable' on a PLA product. They also made us change the original 'made with corn' claim to 'made with plants,' but all these specifics seemed to change daily. The PLA people really seemed like greenwashers to me, but I can't be sure, obviously, without the pertinent data on PLA (which they would not let us see).

[Tim W]

I remember reading somewhere that the ceramic/clay cups used for drinking chai are simply shattered on the ground after use... I'm not sure this is true, but if it is, I'm not sure if it is better or worse... it seems like they would be somewhat biodegradable... I'm not sure... perhaps you could enlighten us!

On another subject, current disposable paper cups are NOT recyclable because of the plastic lining used inside of them. The only parts that are would be the lid (which are generally #5 and not heavily recycled) and the paper sleeve. The best we can do is create a cup that is biodegradable or reusable. Either that or drink your coffee quickly before the liquid deteriorates the vessel.