Gaeastar: Creating a New Coffee Cup... Out of Dirt

We throw away 50,000,000,000, that's fifty BILLION, single use coffee cups each year, in the US alone. While most of these are made out of paper they include a plastic liner which makes them very tricky, if impossible, to recycle. Sanjeev Mankotia is on a mission to create a better coffee cup, one you can recycle yourself, just by smashing it on the ground. The idea for Gaeastar arose when Sanjeev was visiting family in India. There he was re-introduced the millennia old practice of building a cup out of clay. Local vendors would go the river bed in the morning, form their cups out of mud, then sell their wares to clients who would smash the cups on the ground after they'd finished their drink. Simple, elegant, and entirely environmentally sound. Using 3D printing and robotics automation Sanjeev is adopting that tradition to a western market. He envisions a world where every coffee shop has their own 3D printing machine on the counter, building coffee cups to order, personalized with your name and smash-ready when you're done with your morning brew. Check out more at www.gaeastar.com. Thanks for listening, you can always email us with thoughts, guest suggestions and feedback at hello@whossavingtheplanet.com