lidless coffee cup by kyung hoon hyun from usa

Coffee is good. In fact, we are getting addicted by the coffee. Thanks to the global coffee shop that started as small café in Seattle, we are drinking coffee more than any time in the history of mankind. Only in America, people over 50% drinks coffee every day, and this represents 150 million drinkers. Technically, Americans consume 400millon cups of coffee per day. If we consider the coffee consumption globally, it would be enormous. Thus, just by changing one tiny part of coffee cup could reduce tons of money and environmental threats! I think it is best represented as “many little makes a mickle.”

The disposable coffee cups that most of café use consist of two parts, the paper cup and the plastic lid; Plastic lid helps to keep coffee from spilling. However, we all know that plastic is not environmentally friendly than ‘recycled’ paper, and especially when there is a way to create the coffee cup only from recycled paper that also keeps coffee from spilling.

The Lidless Coffee-Cup is inspired by paper milk containers, and takeout containers from restaurants. Just by folding the some parts of the paper cup, it is very easy to create the mechanisms of milk container but since the glue should not be used (Because of stacking problem) the “hook” mechanism from the takeout boxes was use to keep the half of the opening closed tightly. User can drink from the other half, from mouth to opening or with the straw.