This is by far, one of the coolest ideas I’ve heard in a long time—compostable coffee cups, embedded with seeds!

Americans alone consume billions of cups of coffee annually, which leads to innumerous disposable coffee cups winding up in the trash and eventually in landfills.

Alex Henige, a landscape-architecture student from California, had the idea to create a disposable coffee cup that could actually help the environment! He founded an organization which has set out to promote sustainability and change the way consumers view the trash they create daily—starting with disposable coffee cups.

The video below explains that disposable coffee cups are one of the biggest sources of waste that people create on a daily basis. Even if folks “recycle” their cups, they can only be recycled a couple times before becoming unusable, and inevitably winding up in a landfill anyway.

So how could this be avoided?

Imagine if a disposable coffee cup existed, that was fully compostable, so that it would eventually break down to nothing and would never take up space in a landfill.  Better still, imagine that these cups have seeds embedded within them that could be planted in local communities or even used for re-forestation.

To me, this sounds like a brilliant idea, and apparently I’m not the only one who thinks so!

You see, Henige started a Kickstarter campaign hoping to earn enough funding to create a prototype of a compostable cup, and the $10,000 goal was met within a few days!

It would appear that there are loads of people who support the idea of creating less waste and exploring ways that we, as consumers, can promote sustainability and participate in a more ecological lifestyle.

Here is the video which explains how disposable coffee cups could be used to grow trees and other native plants.

I’m so excited at the possibility of seeing this idea in action!

 

Relephant read:

How Many Paper Cups Will Die for You to Get Your Buzz On This Year? 

Author: Yoli Ramazzina

Editor: Travis May

Photos: Video screenshot.