We drink coffee because it's good, because it wakes us up, because of morning rituals or afternoons spent with friends. So why not celebrate it? Why not gather everybody, all over the globe, and have a big cup of coffee together? That is the plan for the upcoming International Coffee Day held on 29th September, where people can celebrate coffee in all its diversity, and enjoy the passion that coffee creates in countries that include the United States, Japan, Australia and right here in the UK.
Now ok the title may be a tad misleading, as this isn't actually about a particular blend of coffee, but rather the cup and saucer you use for the experience……what you actually end up drinking will only be as good as the coffee you put in it, but don't let that detract you from what is a super creation from the independent company Kaffeeform.
Kaffeeform is an innovative recycled material made from used coffee grounds and renewable raw materials. After five years of experimentation and investigation, a unique formula was created to transform old coffee into new products.
To demonstrate the boundless possibilities of this new material, the designers produced Kaffeeform coffee cups – cups themselves made out of used coffee! Kaffeeform products have a number of notable characteristics: the surface of Kaffeeform has the appearance of dark marblewood and is unique to each piece, the smell of coffee is retained in the finished pieces and they are lightweight, washable and durable and so ideal for repeated coffee consumption.
The material itself and the series of coffee cups made from recycled coffee grounds were exhibited for the first time in public at the Amsterdam Coffee Festival to much intrigue and interest. An initial production run of 250 Kaffeeform cups was offered exclusively at the fair stand, and sold out immediately. They were then made available to buy from their website, and sold out completely again. They are now available to pre-order with a shipping date of 1st October however if you happened to have been at the London Design Festival in the Greek Street Galley in Soho that ended yesterday you would’ve been able to pick some up from the guys there. They are reasonably priced too at £18 for a cup and saucer, £29 for 2 cups and saucers, and £50 for 4 and 4.
The amount of daily coffee consumption world-wide is growing, thus the potential of reusing its waste for further uses is enormous. Kaffeeform is a sustainable material that aims to take advantage of these readily available waste materials to become an alternative to petrochemical based structural plastics.
For more information on Kaffeeform please head on over to their website here, and for the International Coffee Day please see here.