真正的"咖啡杯"：用咖啡渣制成的杯碟
Company recycles coffee grounds into durable coffee cups
German company Kaffeeform combines dried coffee grounds and biopolymer to create stylish-looking coffee cups and saucers that are not only durable and dishwasher-safe, but even smell a bit like coffee.
一家名為Kaffeeform的德國公司通過混合咖啡渣和生物高聚物,發(fā)明了一種新潮時(shí)尚的咖啡杯和咖啡碟.這種咖啡杯套裝不僅耐用,還可以用洗碗機(jī)清洗,聞起來甚至還帶有淡淡的咖啡香.
For every cup of coffee you brew, about two tablespoons of grounds wind up in the trash. That doesn't seem like a lot, but just think about the millions of coffees consumed around the world every single day, and you'll start to see the problem. Sure, some of those coffee grounds are recycled as fertilizer or beauty products like face masks, but most of it ends up at landfills. It was while contemplating this issue that German product designer Julian Lechner came up with a radical new and sustainable way of recycling coffee grounds – turning them into tableware.
當(dāng)你每泡一杯咖啡時(shí),都會剩下兩大匙的咖啡渣.雖然看似剩下的量很少,但是當(dāng)每天全世界消費(fèi)數(shù)百萬杯咖啡時(shí),帶來的問題就不容小覷了.的確,一些咖啡渣被回收利用作為肥料或是面膜類的美容產(chǎn)品,但是大多數(shù)的咖啡渣都被丟進(jìn)了垃圾堆.德國一位產(chǎn)品設(shè)計(jì)師朱利恩·理奇耐在考慮這個(gè)問題時(shí),萌生了一個(gè)大膽新奇的、可持續(xù)回收咖啡渣的方法——將其變?yōu)榭Х缺?
Lechner first came up with the idea of using coffee grounds to create eco-friendly crockery while attending university in the Italian city of Bolzano. "We were always drinking coffee at university," he remembers. "Before classes, after classes, meeting friends, hanging out at espresso bars—all the time. And that's how I started to wonder, What happens to all that coffee? It was all just getting thrown away." He began consulting with his professors about ways of using coffee grounds to create a solid material, but it took him years to actually come up with a viable solution.
理奇耐在意大利波爾扎諾上大學(xué)時(shí)提出了一個(gè)設(shè)想——利用咖啡渣做環(huán)保陶器.他回憶說："我們在大學(xué)每天都喝咖啡,上課前,下課后,跟朋友聚會時(shí),泡咖啡吧時(shí)……無時(shí)無刻不在喝咖啡.所以我就開始思考,這些剩下的咖啡渣就只能被丟掉嗎？"他開始和他的教授們討論如何把這些咖啡渣變成堅(jiān)固的材料,但是他們花了幾年才找到一個(gè)可行的辦法.
"We tried binding with a lot of different things," Julian Lechner told VICE Munchies. "We even tried sugar. That was close, but basically it was a candy cup. It just kept dissolving after being used three times." The whole point was to make the material durable, so it was back to the drawing board for him and his partners at a German research institute. Finally, after many failed experiments, long nights and liters of coffee, they came up with a mix of coffee grounds wood grains and a biopolymer of cellulose, lignin, and natural resins that seemed to behave the way Julian had envisioned it when he first embarked on his quest.
