Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “You Can Smash This Coffee Cup and Leave It on the Ground (It’s Made from Dirt)”.
Foreign you’re probably used to getting your coffee served to you in something like this. This is a paper cup, but there is plastic in there now when you’re done with it, you probably throw it in the trash or maybe even the compost, but that plastic is still going to take a long time to decompose. So what if you could get your coffee in something like this? This is made of clay and when you are done with it, if you wanted to, you can drop it on the ground, smash it and walk away. Guilt-Free. Every year, Americans use around 50 billion paper.
Coffee cups, but a small startup called gyastar, wants to help smash that number. With its 3D printed disposable clay cups made from just three ingredients: dirt salt and a small amount of water. Ceo Sanjeev mankodia came up with the idea when he was visiting family in India and his cousin was drinking tea out of a terracotta cup 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 has caused creating litter and and her reaction was like. Well, you know it’s made out of dirt, so why? Why is this an issue? And that was a light bulb moment for Sanjeev clay doesn’t need to be recycled or composted, which requires energy and creates greenhouse gases, and it doesn’t take hundreds of years to decompose like plastic, that sits in landfills when you throw it away, it’s dirt again, so end To end it comes from earth goes back to Earth.
Sanjeev had been working with 3D printing for years, so he started developing his own printer. That could create single-use ceramic cups. He couldn’t show us the printer because of the pending patent, but we do have this render our machine uses the principles of additive manufacturing, but also some of the traditional way of creating Ceramics Sanjeev says it can print a ceramic cup using about 60 percent, less energy Than it takes to create a traditional disposable cut, I tried them out and I have to say I found them a lot more enjoyable to sip from than paper or plastic cups.
I call this the Fine China experience with the convenience of disposability. We want our machine to be in every restaurant, every every Cafe, where it’s a desktop machine and, depending on the customer’s needs, whether it’s an espresso cup a plate, a food bowl, an ice cream bowl. We just hit the button and it prints the cup in less than 10 seconds. So how much is this going to cost me? If I go to my coffee shop and they have an option, for you know one of your cups.
Am I going to pay a premium for it yeah? So you know the beauty about. This is the raw material, the raw material, no pun intended is dirt cheap. So there’s a lot of advantages in every step of the process: you’re saving energy. You know pollution cost labor and when you scale it up, we feel that this could be priced comparable to the incumbent cups that are out in the market. If not cheaper.
You can already find the Cubs at coffee shops and ice cream parlors in Berlin, Germany, fun fact. Sanjeev says the ceramic actually keeps ice cream colder for longer when compared to a paper cup. Now Gaia, star is bringing its cups to the U.S, starting with a trial. At Verve coffee shops in California, you’re creating this sustainable product. That also actually is an elevated customer experience. So it’s kind of a win-win on all fronts. This is actually a replacement for a single-use paper and plastic cups, and once that hits you, you realize there’s actually no comparison.
Now, of course, Gaia. Star isn’t actually advocating that you leave charge of Clay on the sidewalk. This is really just meant to be more of a demonstration of how little impact these cups could have on the environment. So would you want to see these cups in your local coffee shop? Let me know in the comments below, if you enjoyed this video, please don’t forget to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to CNET for more what the future .