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How Do You Take Your Coffee: Black, With Cream or Injection-Molded?

By Patty Wetli | May 29, 2015 8:31am | Updated on May 30, 2015 8:54am
 A German designer named Julian Lechner figured out a way to turn coffee grounds into a line of cups and saucers Lechner's dubbed Kaffeeform.
A German designer named Julian Lechner figured out a way to turn coffee grounds into a line of cups and saucers Lechner's dubbed Kaffeeform.
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Facebook/The Amsterdam Coffee Festival

LINCOLN SQUARE — Turns out, drinking fair-trade organic coffee out of a reusable mug made from bamboo that's been sustainably farmed by a micro-financed women's collective in Central America is still not eco-friendly.

Forgot about the grounds, didn't you?

Growers produce more than 16 billion pounds of coffee a year and after those beans are magically transformed into your daily caffeine fix, most of the grounds wind up in landfills.

Efforts are under way to filter some of that waste out of the trash.

A team of scientists is investigating the feasibility of transforming grounds' natural oil — 11 to 20 percent by weight — into biofuel. And companies like Vermont Coffee are promoting a number of simple ways to reuse the grounds at home: compost; hair dye, especially for brunettes; or whisk them with an egg white for a DIY facial.

But perhaps the most interesting solution to the coffee grounds conundrum is in the manufacturing of ... coffee mugs.

A German designer named Julian Lechner figured out a way to take grounds, which he salvages from Berlin cafes, and add natural glues and wood particles (sustainably sourced, naturally) to create a liquid that's then injection-molded into a line of cups and saucers Lechner's dubbed Kaffeeform.

In short your receptacle for your morning coffee IS coffee.

Now if Lechner can guarantee his grounds are fair-trade organic and contract Kaffeeform production out to that micro-financed women's collective in Central America, we'll have reached conscious consumerism nirvana.

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