The market for recyclable cups without a lid is growing

After Unocup, which was developed by New York designers after a crowdfunding campaign, a new product has just appeared on the British market: the ButterflyCup.

The conclusion is the same. Each year, 8.5 million tonnes of plastic are found in the world's oceans. In the UK, figures show 5,000 cups of coffee thrown away every minute, or 2.5 billion cups of coffee every year, while only 1 in 400 is recycled.

This is why ButterflyCup was launched in the United Kingdom at the beginning of December 2020. The product is also available in around twenty countries today.

Folding game

After Unocup, ButterflyCup presents itself as the most ecological disposable cup in the world. Most cups today are not recycled due to their plastic liner and separate plastic lid.

Today only 14% of the packaging produced is correctly collected and therefore recycled", recalls ButterflyCup on its website.

 As of January 1, 2020, straws and similar single-use plastic items such as hot drink caps are banned.

The design of the ButterflyCup cup makes the use of these obsolete. Indeed, its innovative folding takes the form of two beaks; forming an eco-friendly lid that makes it easy to drink anywhere. »

A cup to recycle

Unlike traditional take-out cups, Unocup and ButterflyCup contain no plastic laminate and, most importantly, due to their one-piece design, eliminate the need for a plastic lid. A clever folding game solves the problem.

The disposable cup to take away without a lid can thus be recycled in the bin reserved for paper, where paper and cardboard are normally thrown away. The mug naturally biodegrades and can be composted.

While a cold brew requires an average of 12 to 24 hours of infusion, German scientists have managed to prepare this tasty iced coffee in just three minutes, by developing a laser extraction method. A solution that they hope to market soon, before extending it to other drinks.

Extracted with a laser, this cold-brew coffee is prepared in three minutes

The scientists used a laser producing 80,000 pulses of 125 picojoules per second.

With several billion regular consumers, coffee ranks second among the most popular beverages on our planet, just behind water. Tight or long, with or without sugar, diluted with milk, depending on tastes, cultures, and morning mood, this simple pleasure can be declined indefinitely.

In recent years, caffeine junkies have been praising the merits of a beverage invented in Japan a few centuries ago: the cold brew.

Refreshing, less bitter, and less acidic, this preparation has everything to please, except for its infusion time. It is indeed necessary to wait between 12 and 24 hours so that the ground coffee diffuses all its aromas in cold water before finally being able to filter it and taste it.

 Suffice it to say that this recipe is not suitable for the heads in the air, nor for the impatient who demand their daily energy shot immediately. Fortunately for them, a team of scientists from the German University of Duisburg and Essen claims to be able to considerably reduce this waiting time, thanks to an ultra-short pulse laser.

 A revolutionary coffee pod that does away with capsules?

BIODEGRADABLE The pod would be surrounded by a biodegradable membrane

It could be a real “revolution”, according to the distribution giant. Migros must present a coffee pod only surrounded by a biodegradable membrane, which would make it possible to do without capsules, believes the Swiss daily SonntagsZeitung.

Migros will present under the CoffeeB brand a ball of ground and pressed coffee, surrounded by a thin membrane, which completely eliminates metal or plastic capsules, according to the Sunday newspaper. The coffee ball - an individual dose - is deposited by the user in a specially designed coffee machine and once used it is 100% compostable, including the membrane, explains the newspaper which relies on patents filed by Delica, a subsidiary of Migros.

A new way of sustainable coffee consumption

The group invited the press on Tuesday in Zurich, in the presence of Fabrice Zumbrunnen, the general manager of the distribution group. The invitation evokes “the launch of a breakthrough innovation, destined to become a new way of sustainable coffee consumption”.

With this innovation, “Migros has found a solution to a double problem: the current aluminum or plastic capsules are very energy-intensive to manufacture and they are the source of enormous quantities of waste”, underlines the newspaper. According to the latter, the Delica teams worked for five years at their Birsfelden site near Basel to develop this new product. If CoffeeB appeals to consumers, it will compete directly with that of another Swiss giant, the Nespresso capsules from the Nestlé group.