48 50 SOLUTlONS sustainability Upcycling gives a boost to coffee waste management The Kreis Cup is a durable and reusable cup made from recycled coffee grounds and a plant-based polymer binder to offer a sustainable, biodegradable and lightweight fi nal product. It even smells like coffee! January 2022, the project is about to come on market this August. R ealizing that only 25% of coff ee waste is re-used, the Kreis Cup project started in 2020 gathering a team of professionals from product design, engineering and manufacturing to create a product that could help transform the coff ee industry. Partnering with coff ee roasters, shops and distributors, they merged their expertise and knowledge to create an innovative solution to coff ee waste: the Kreis Cup. As the fi rst working prototype was completed in A dark and bitter reality about coffee waste Everyday over 2 billion cups of coff ee are consumed worldwide with 99% of used coff ee grounds treated as waste. Most used grounds (approximately 75%) end up in landfi lls, where they decompose and generate methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more harmful than CO2 over a 100-year period. Add to this the fact that around 250 billion single-use coff ee cups are thrown away every year and Sustainability Upcycling gives a boost to coffee waste management Defence On fi eld applications with composites Coffee waste reused to contain your coffee Seven facts about coffee waste 48 jec composites magazine / N° 147 September - October 2022 SOLUTlONS