No Need to Recycle, These Disposable Coffee Cups are Made of Dirt
upstart writes:
You can smash these 3D-printed cups from GaeaStar on the ground and walk away:
Imagine the horrified looks you'd get if you dropped your paper coffee cup on the ground, stepped on it and walked away. A startup based in San Francisco and Germany says you can do exactly that with its cups, guilt-free.
GaeaStar is getting ready to introduce its 3D-printed, disposable clay cups to the US, after a successful trial period at coffee shops and ice cream parlors in Berlin. Watch the video above to learn more.
The cups are made from just three ingredients: dirt, salt and a small amount of water. Founder and CEO Sanjeev Mankotia told CNET he had the idea when he was visiting family in India and his cousin was drinking chai from a terracotta cup she bought from a street vendor. "She drank the cup, and then smashed it on the ground. And I was like, 'You're throwing something away that's creating litter.' And her reaction was, "It's made out of dirt, why is this an issue?"
Those terracotta cups, or "Kuhlars" have been used in South Asia for 5,000 years. They are typically never reused.
[...] According to GaeaStar, it can print a ceramic cup using about 60% less energy than it takes to create a plastic or paper cup, for about the same price. "When you scale it up, we feel that this could be priced in parallel or comparable to the incumbent cups in the market, if not cheaper."
[...] GaeaStar's long-term goal is to put its patent-pending 3D-printers in shops around the US, where cups could be printed on-demand in about 10 seconds. Mankotia says dirt can be sourced locally to save energy. In the meantime, you'll be able to find them in select Verve Coffee shops around California this year.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.