真正的“咖啡杯”：用咖啡渣製成的杯碟
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.
一家名爲Kaffeeform的德國公司通過混合咖啡渣和生物高聚物，發明了一種新潮時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.
當你每泡一杯咖啡時，都會剩下兩大匙的咖啡渣。雖然看似剩下的量很少，但是當每天全世界消費數百萬杯咖啡時，帶來的問題就不容小覷了。的確，一些咖啡渣被回收利用作爲肥料或是面膜類的美容產品，但是大多數的咖啡渣都被丟進了垃圾堆。德國一位產品設計師朱利恩·理奇耐在考慮這個問題時，萌生了一個大膽新奇的、可持續回收咖啡渣的方法——將其變爲咖啡杯具。
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時提出了一個設想——利用咖啡渣做環保陶器。他回憶說：“我們在大學每天都喝咖啡，上課前，下課後，跟朋友聚會時，泡咖啡吧時……無時無刻不在喝咖啡。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固的材料，但是他們花了幾年才找到一個可行的辦法。
“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.
“我們試着用不同的粘着劑，甚至嘗試過用糖。”朱利恩·理奇耐在Vice Munchines（一檔美食節目）上稱，“雖然材料很接近咖啡渣，但是做出來基本上是一隻‘糖杯’，而且用了三次之後就融化了。” 讓原料變得更堅固耐用是最核心的問題，所以他和他的夥伴們又在德國一所研究所從頭開始鑽研。他們做了無數個失敗的試驗，熬了無數個漫漫長夜，在試驗中用掉了無數升咖啡渣後，最後終於創造了夢寐以求的材料，這種材料由咖啡渣、木料、纖維素和木質素等生物高聚物材料以及天然樹脂混合而成。
“The moment of knowing the cup would actually stand was super-exciting,” he recalls. “After such a long time, you have to really believe in an idea and that it can eventually work. It was overwhelming to drink that first coffee out of the cup. It proved to be totally worth the wait.” And the fact that his creation has proven commercially successful is just the icing on the cake. Kaffeeform coffee cups and saucers are now present in ten shops across Europe, and the company can hardly keep up with demand, regularly selling out of its stock online. And they’ve only been in business for a year.
理奇耐回憶說，當得知這種杯子不會融化，可以堅挺地放置時，他欣喜若狂。“研究了這麼長時間，你就必須得相信這個想法是可行的，而且它最終可以實現。當我喝到用這種杯子泡出來的第一杯咖啡時，心情百感交集。這麼久的等待沒有白費。”錦上添花的是，他的發明還取得了商業成功，帶來了經濟效益。現在歐洲有十家實體店出售Kaffeeform 咖啡杯具，但是仍然供不應求，公司的網店隔一段時間就會賣斷貨，而他們纔剛營業一年。
“It basically all happened through word of mouth,” Lechner says about the success of his company. “It’s amazing to think of some of the places where orders have come from. A lot of individuals, but also a café in Saudi Arabia, Ritz Carlton Toronto, and the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo to sell in their museum [gift shop].”
理奇耐談到公司的成功時說道：“咖啡杯具的銷售基本上是靠口碑的。”訂單來自不同的地方，有的地方真的太出人意外了。有許多單獨的客戶購買，也有來自沙特阿拉伯的咖啡店和多倫多麗嘉酒店的訂單，甚至連諾貝爾和平獎的頒發地奧斯陸的博物館都在出售Kaffeeform咖啡杯具。
Kaffeeform will soon launch a larger line of coffee grounds cups for cappuccino, and is also working on a travel mug. But those are just short-term plans, as Lechner hopes to one day use recycled coffee grounds to create all sort of useful stuff. “What’s next? I’d love to see if we could one day create sheets,” he says. “Perhaps they could later be used for furniture in cafés and restaurants.”
Kaffeeform公司很快將大量生產一款專門泡卡布奇諾的咖啡杯，同時它也可以作爲旅行杯。但是這些都是短期計劃，理奇耐希望未來能夠用可循環咖啡渣創造出各種實用物品。“下一個是什麼呢？我想試試看用它能不能做牀單。”他說道，”或許有一天咖啡渣能夠用來做咖啡館和餐館的傢俱呢。”
