Sure, why don’t we just drink in the shop? Out of a porcelain cup or a glass? It doesn’t get more sustainable than that, and Zeit Online (unfortunately paywalled) called it pretty much the only proper way to go about it. What they ignore, however, is that this doesn’t match the reality of people rushing to nursery, work or university – and that coffee to go isn’t simply a yes or no question.

Anyone who wants to drink decent coffee knows the downsides of takeaway coffee.

It’s not just the cup that’s rubbish. The taste is different, the temperature doesn’t hold as long. You accept all of that as a compromise to have a coffee that’s still better than what comes out of the office filter machine – the one that’s been sitting on the hotplate for hours, getting more bitter by the minute. A consumption problem, no doubt. But for me, as for many others, it’s a way of treating yourself. The little luxury you need in the day and the cup of good coffee that helps you start things on a calmer note.

Let’s set aside for a moment the circumstances that might lead people to take their coffee from their own machine or from a barista. Here’s another way to transport your coffee:

The HuskeeCup

This takes a similar approach to Kaffeeform‘s cups, but starts one step earlier: with the coffee husk itself. The cups are made of roughly 50% husk material, but unfortunately also about 50% plastic, specifically polypropylene.
Huskee argues this gives the cups their stability and, from their perspective, they remain recyclable. But it also enables the cup’s design: the ribs on the outside that protect your fingers from the heat.

The design is what made me buy one. The two available colours look premium in their own right. The cup is genuinely sturdy, BPA-free and perfectly dishwasher-safe. A rubber ring, which the Weducer now also has, helps the cup retain its liquid.

Compared directly to the Weducer, the HuskeeCup feels a bit more refined and sturdier. The Weducer has a coarser texture due to its material, while the plastic makes the Huskee smoother. There’s also no material influence on the taste, unlike what I described with the Weducer.

That said, the two cups are pretty evenly matched in quality, with the obvious sustainability bonus going to the Weducer!

In Germany you can get HuskeeCups from Amazon. If you’d rather order directly from the manufacturer, you’ll find the Huskee online shop here.

This post is part of my coffee page.

It can, at least in London, and most likely if you get your coffee from one of the Change Please stalls. They employ formerly homeless people who have been trained as baristas to help them get off the streets. Behind it is The Big Issue homeless magazine, comparable to Germany’s Hinz & Kunzt, but above all Change Please is driven by Cemal Ezel.

I saw him last year at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam, where he rightly won first prize in the Chivas Venture final. I was struck by the metaphors in his talk alone. “Change Please” as a request from a homeless person for spare change, but also as Cemal’s plea to please finally change something, and the to-go coffee cup, which is not uncommonly used for begging. The rest is equally well thought out, as you can see here:

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Change Please coffee is continuously sold at more and more mobile and fixed stations, getting more and more homeless people off the streets and into jobs, and in cooperation with the British supermarket chain Sainsbury’s, they sell their own coffee blends. Of course, I had to pick some up on my last visit to the island, instead of Grind.

It was mentioned during his talk that Change Please would expand to other countries. I would love to see that happen. It feels so straightforward and good in so many ways.
Until then, we’ll continue to drink our coffee at home and happily spare a euro when asked, or buy the Hinz & Kunzt magazine (at least in Hamburg).

You can find out more about the project on the Change Please website: changeplease.org

This post is part of my coffee page and my All Things British page.

Approaches to offering consumers alternatives are becoming more diverse, but often weaken in one place or another. Various deposit systems are not widespread and therefore hardly noticed; they are even more of a regional phenomenon.
In the case of sustainable reusable cups, which are much more widespread, the plastic lid that is often present is questionable. Products from brands of every stripe are often optimised for low-cost production processes, which almost automatically means plasticisers. So even the porcelain cup with a plasticised plastic lid is only well intentioned, not well made.

Forget plastic, drink from coffee

The Kaffeeform ensemble, on the other hand, is quite well made. From the espresso and cappuccino cups to the takeaway cup. It is the logical extension of the Kaffeeform concept.

Kaffeeform has thought about how to make something new out of used coffee grounds. To do this, the grounds are collected from various cafés in Berlin, processed and then shaped. That alone, drinking coffee from coffee, is already brilliant. But their products are also dishwasher-safe, relatively unbreakable, food-safe, free of plasticisers and, above all, resource-friendly.

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I was convinced about drinking coffee from coffee a long time ago when I bought the cappuccino cups. Now, with the Weducer Cup, I find the sustainable approach even more on point. How easy it can be to do without a rubber or plastic lid by using a screw cap and then get a sustainable cup for 15 euros, which is hardly more expensive than all the other wannabe cups. Brilliant!

The only downside is that when the cups are new, they still smell a bit like coffee, and this affects the drink inside. I quite liked it at first, but didn’t miss it when it faded after a few runs through the dishwasher.

Kaffeeform’s cups are not only available online. There are also a few shops, especially in Berlin, that stock them. Go for it!

If you want the right coffee to go with it, you’ll find it at Espressolution (Saicaf Oro), Public Coffee Roasters (Moonlight) and Tork’s Coffee (India Monsooned Malabar).

This post is part of my coffee page.