Redesigning the coffee cup

The betacup is a recently completed competition to re-imagine a coffee cup with reduced environmental impact. As many as 58 million coffee cups are discarded every year in the United States alone, and along with most of them, a sleeve that protects the holder’s hands from scalding.

The proposed solutions offer a range of great ideas for how to approach the problem, from the Karma Cup’s social engineering angle to Miller Creative’s Radial Fin Cup with an integrated insulating sleeve design.

The Karma Cup uses social engineering to increase the use of reusable cups and therefore reduce waste:

Miller Creative’s entry reduces waste by integrating the protective sleeve, using biodegradable and renewable resources for the rest of the cup and employing a manufacturing process that does not require glue:

The betacup contest was sponsored by jovoto, an organization that describes itself as “a marketplace for creative concepts [that connects] those who have ideas with those who need them, providing the necessary tools to make the process fun and fair.”

The betacup entry ranked #1 by the jovoto community is a 100% biodegradable cup made from rice husks and available in a disposable or reusable version. (The reusable one even comes with an RFID sleeve that would replace the prepaid payment card.)

See all betacup entries on the jovoto website.