In 2015, UK branches of the fast-food chain KFC ran a promotion stunt to celebrate their collaboration with coffee company, Seattle’s Best. The promotion featured edible wafer and white chocolate coffee cups enveloped in sugar paper sleeves branded with the Colonel’s logo. Unfortunately, the infrastructure needed to support the mass transport of disposed of cups to specialist recycling plants is likely too great to achieve. And therefore, we’re unlikely to see dedicated recycling bins pop up on our streets anytime soon. More innovative ideas range from drinking straws made from agar seaweed, and food bubbles called WikiPearls. These are bite-sized morsels of food surrounded by edible membranes. The company has collaborated with coffee brands like Lavazza, which has resulted with the introduction of the Cupffee in 18 countries. The company has been served at Wimbledon and has been used by Etihad Airways from Abu Dhabi to Brisbane on Earth Day. This traction has led to the company’s initial external investment of EUR 500,000 in a pre-seed funding round from Eleven Ventures, and a EUR 1.3M grant from the European Innovation Council.

You launched Twiice just a few weeks ago, but you first started working on the idea four years ago. What happened in those years to make that idea into a reality? Considering that in 2018, marathon participants left 919,676 plastic bottles strewn along the course, the adoption of edible water pouches is a far more sustainable option for the annual event. Additionally, in 2018, Etihad Airlines served in-flight beverages in Cupffee cookie-based cups. This was the world’s first plastic-free long haul flight between Abu Dhabi and Australia, and aimed to promote World Earth Day.Unfortunately, their fun and unique style also mean they could be an easy target for more of this, as well as ‘greenwashing’ in the coming years, with companies looking to boost their profile in the wake of 2022 plans to limit single-use plastics. Even just a small trial of an edible cup can give the impression a brand is willing or looking to change, but when the time to put in real investment comes… they’re often nowhere to be seen. Single-use plastics are causing ‘significant’ harm to our environment and ecosystems, noted entrepreneur Miroslav Zapryanov, who is working to disrupt this trend with an edible alternative to paper/polyethylene coffee cups. The edible cookie cup​ The idea behind the Cupffee edible coffee cup comes from Miroslav Zapryanov, company founder and CEO at Cupffee. As a student, Zapryanov began considering the environmental ramifications of plastic waste and disposable coffee cups and spent years developing the recipe in his own kitchen. Today, with a specialized machine and production process in place, this idea has materialized into a company capable of producing up to 2.5 million cups per day. The cups are manufactured in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

Say you have a hot cup of coffee in your Twiice cup. How long can you keep that coffee in the cup and still have the cup remain intact? Sustainability is a balance between the economics and the least energy and resource-intensive pathways and the best environmental performance and social outcomes across life cycles and throughout supply chains,” said Meidl. Our official line is that it’ll stay crispy until after you finish your coffee. The cup won’t break with the coffee. We always test our cups with boiling water, [so it won’t] spill the coffee all over your desk or anything. Basically, you can have water in there for 24 hours and it won’t break or split. It might be a bit flexible and you might be able to push the sides in a bit, but the cup won’t actually break. So it lasts for quite a long time. “It all kind of started as a throwaway comment” (Photo: Supplied) Bulgaria-based Cupffee was founded in 2014 and moved into industrial production in 2018. The start-up, headed up by Zapryanov as CEO, makes its edible coffee cups from seven ingredients, including oat bran, wheat flour, sugar and oil.Known as Scoff-ee cups, the mug was crafted with wafer biscuits, lined with heat-resistant white chocolate, and a sugar paper wrapping displaying the KFC logo and colors. And while the rise of the edible coffee cup feels like it’s come and gone, it still has never been topped due to its simple promise of no leftover waste, whether you eat it or bin it. The BioPBS™-lined cup was funded by a consortium that also includes KFC, Pizza Hut, Coca Cola and Nestle, and was discovered after the consortium hosted a NextGen Cup Challenge initiative to find inventors and industry experts with fully biodegradable cup designs. But what’s frustrating is that none of the major coffee chains has even tried to see if it would be a hit with customers. Both our wives are semi-involved as well. My wife (Simone Cashmore) is in graphic design and branding, so she’s done all the branding for Twiice, while my father’s wife (Theresa Cashmore) does a lot of stuff with him on the production side of the business. Co-founder Jamie Cashmore sipping from a Twiice cup (Photo: Supplied)

So with help from edible coffee cup company Twiice, Air New Zealand began trialing vanilla-flavored biscotti mugs on board their flights. One particular product which has been immediately integrated into our everyday life is the edible coffee cup. Many startup companies are developing such products, including Scottish startup Biobite, Bulgarian based Cupffee, Ukrainian company Lekorna and Moldova-based Wayris. These edible coffee cups typically comprise a wafer or biscuit based cup which has been developed to prevent the immediate absorption of the liquid they contain. Depending on the brand selected, the edible cups reportedly stay crispy for between 20 and 60 minutes and can remain leakproof for up to 12 hours. In the UK, it is estimated that around 2.5 billion disposable coffee cups are thrown away each year and that only 0.25% of them are recycled.As coffee chains and restaurants aim to limit their use of single-use plastic takeout cups, dozens of new innovations are revealed every few months, all claiming to be the savior of sustainability, and looking not too dissimilar from the coffee cups we know and love.

London-based startup Notpla has created Ooho, a liquid encapsulated in a waterproof and edible film made from seaweed. Users can eat the film if they wish, or – if that doesn’t appeal – the film will simply biodegrade in four to six weeks.In Australia and elsewhere in the world, most people start their day with a cup of coffee. Many coffee-loving folks like to enjoy their drink on the go, which could lead many to use (and dispose of) many disposable cups in just one day! A desire to reduce the disastrous impact that this disposable waste has on the environment has brought about the concept of edible cups. The start-up’s sales pitch is primarily about sustainability, and Good-Edi says its offering is better for the environment than a plastic-lined paper cup even if it isn’t eaten. Plenty of coffee chains even offer incentives for customers who bring their own cups, with things like discounts or extra loyalty stamps available for environmental do-gooders. The recycled paper coating of the Cupffee edible cups is entirely customizable with colors, phrases, names, dates or company logos.Just provide iGreengadgets with high-quality graphics in PDF format, and we will help you create the most suitable personalization for your cups. Each customization is made with high definition printing, so that the aesthetic aspect of the Cupffee cups recalls the original and modern nature, for beautiful, as well as good cups. A cup for countless occasions of use