Biodegradable Coffee Cups Emebedded With Seeds Can Be Planted To Grow Into Trees
If zeitgeist had a body, it would be drinking sweet, overpriced coffee in a plastic-lid cardboard coffee cup. And a Californian company called Reduce. Reuse. Grow. has a solution to coffee-cup related environmental issues: biodegradable cups that can be planted to grow into trees and flowers! The secret is in the seed embedded in the cup. The only thing that a consumer needs to do is unravel the cup, soak it in water for 5 minutes and then plant it. Or, if you’re terribly lazy, throw it away – it’s either going to grow into something, or just decompose after 180 days.
The idea has merit. Coffee cups are consumed in quantities that overshadow even the complaints about misspelled names on them. They’re obviously made from trees, and if you have not heard about the connection between deforestation and a variety of environmental issues, well, then you’re probably our only 5 year old reader. And the trees (or flowers) that will sprout from cups won’t be random, either: the cups will come with seeds native to whatever region they’re sold in. And if a cup makes its way into a RRG trashcan, the company will make sure that it is transferred into the hands of an organization which knows places in need of trees.
It might not be the decisive solution to deforestation, but it sure is deciduous.
More info: planttrash.com | kickstarter.com (h/t: laughingsquid)
Cup-to-tree instructions
A cup-tree would process 1 ton of CO2 a year
Impact to environment, green cup vs. regular
Alternative uses for seed embedded material
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brilliant minds of this day thankyou for the new hope for humanity.
So you buy the seeds, integrate them in paper, build coffee cups, put the used cups in a special bin, collect all the used cups and plant the seeds. In what way is that better than just buying seeds and planting them?
If you would tell me that I can just throw this cup out of my window while driving without feeling bad about it, I would be interested.
Recycling is the ideal solution,so they incorporate that aspect into the plan,however the real end game is to have something good come from the actions of the vermin that will inevitably just toss their cup out the car window.
So maybe they stay in a landfill and either grow then and there or get buried but eventually resurface and then grow!!?!! This happens…
At any rate it’s better than just plain garbage!
If you were always going to use a cup, any cup, for coffee, wouldn’t it be better if all the cups we had went and made some green somewhere eventually? I don’t think the intention of the cup is TO PLANT some seeds, it is to help the huge number of consumed cups re-integrate with the earth better.