Circular
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Circular design from coffee grounds

 

Waste does not exist. Nonetheless, huge amounts of coffee grounds end up in the Netherlands every year. Now, part of this residual material is given a new purpose in the front panels of the V'Eco coffee machines from De Jong DUKE, a Dutch company from Sliedrecht that makes coffee machines for the European and American market. Scope Design was responsible for the design and development of the front panels, which are allowed to bear the 'circular design' stamp. They are made from a bio-plastic sheet material consisting of a mixture of starch polymer (obtained from a residual potato stream) and ... coffee grounds. The material is completely biodegradable and can be composted if it is written off.

 

 

For coffee , 99.8% consists of waste

 

 

Only in the Netherlands do we drink around 14 billion cups of coffee a year. Worldwide, coffee is by value, after oil, the most traded commodity. The production of coffee is an inefficient process and far from sustainable. Only 0.2% of all raw materials end up in your cup; the remaining 99.8% is waste. In the Netherlands, this means a huge mountain of 300 million kilos of coffee grounds. Various parties are already busy recycling this waste stream, for example for mushroom cultivation. De Jong DUKE and Scope Design also saw it as a great challenge to achieve more circularity with this material.

 

A good example of branding

 

 

Did you know that branding is derived from the English 'burning' and the German 'burning'. In both cases it was about branding property with a unique metal stamp. In the meantime, the word 'brand' in English has the meaning of brand and branding means as much as building up the image and reputation of a brand name. By applying a customer's logo or name in the material with a hotpress, the Jong DUKE customers can also use the V'Eco machine for branding. It is also an environmentally friendly way of branding, since no sticker or ink is needed to place the logo or brand name.

 

Circular design as branding from Scope

 

 

At Scope Design we love sustainable business and timeless design. For example, we have recently developed a new process with which scrap material can be reused in a sustainable manner. This project, RAW METALS, is central to the following blog. The challenge that De Jong DUKE has offered us shows that you can make every product more sustainable by looking at materials and the production process again with a different pair of glasses.

Would you like to know more about sustainable design and reuse of materials? Please contact us here!

 

© SCOPE DESIGN & STRATEGY 2020