These Waste-Free Coffee Cups Are Made From Discarded Coffee Bean Husks
Re-usable coffee cups are better for the environment than disposable ones. But what if there was an even more eco-friendly reusable cup? The folks at Huskee have just created one, using discarded coffee bean husks.
Updated May 26 2019, 1:57 p.m. ET
It's no secret that reusable products are always better for the environment than disposable ones. And now, thanks to a small Australian company Huskee, there's an even more eco-friendly reusable coffee cup on the market. How can you make a reusable cup more eco-friendly than it already is, you ask? By creating the cup from materials that would have otherwise gone to waste--in this case, discarded coffee bean husks.
Yes, Huskee's coffee cups (appropriately called Huskee Cups) are actually made from coffee--or rather byproducts of the coffee production process.
As Huskee's kickstarter page explains, what we think of as "coffee beans" are really seeds from inside the coffee fruit. Around the outside of these seeds are tough, plastic-like casings, called husks. Roughly 1.48 million tons of coffee bean husks are leftover after the milling stage of the coffee production process, but there is currently no economically viable and sustainable way of dealing with these leftover husks. This is why the Huskee Cup was developed--to keep these byproducts from ending up as trash.
To make Huskee Cups, they begin by purchasing leftover husks from coffee growers in Asia. These husks are ground and combined with other natural ingredients to create a one-of-a-kind ceramic resin. It's because of this unique resin that makes the cups 100 percent recyclable. The resin is then poured into specially designed molds to create the cups, which derive their dark charcoal color from the natural ingredients present in the resin itself.
Besides being made from all-natural materials that would have otherwise gone to waste, Huskee Cups are also uniquely styled, with a modern, minimalist look. And unlike traditional ceramic cups that leave your beverages cold after a short amount of time, these coffee cups are able to retain heat much longer.
Huskee is currently in the pre-production stage and have already reached their Kickstarter goal. Delivery is estimated to begin in early 2018.
