could this be the new starbucks coffee cup?

a coffee cup made from home-grown vegetables could serve as a sustainable alternative to the 250 billion fiber cups starbucks uses annually. brooklyn-based design studio crème is behind the design which repurposes gourds, a large fruit with a hard skin, to create the ‘HyO-cup’.

gourds have traditionally been used by ancestors as receptacles like cups for centuries. they are fast-growing plants that bear robust fruit each season. once dried, the gourds develop a robust outer skin and their fibrous inner flesh becomes watertight. crème explored this centuries-old craft, growing the gourds in custom-designed 3D-printed moulds. they eventually developed a stackable design mimicking the silhouette of a classic faceted glass.

the studio points out that the manufacturing of a typical paper-based coffee cup, which is typically lined with unsustainable plastic polyethylene, produces 0.24 lbs (over 100 grams) of carbon dioxide. only 0.25% is estimated to be recycled after disposal, whereas the HyO-cup offers a completely biodegradable alternative.

the design is one of 12 entries in the nextgen cup challenge, a competition to redesign the fiber to-go cup and create a widely recyclable and/or compostable alternative. starbucks invested $10M to launch the challenge in partnership with the closed loop partners and the consortium which icnludes mcdonald’s, the coca-cola company, nestlé and wendy’s.

the 12 teams will be awarded a portion of up to $1 million in funding, and up to six of them will have the chance to develop their designs. they will receive ongoing support to scale up their models and prepare for production and distribution at a global scale, meaning the 250 billion fiber to-go cups that starbucks uses annually could transform right before our eyes.