An interesting initiative for a growing waste problem that also helps tackle climate change and biodiversity, what more could you ask for! A company in California named Reduce. Reuse. Grow. has come up with a biodegradable coffee cup, embedded with native tree and plant seeds. When you’ve finished your coffee, you can plant the cup, or return them, to be planted by the company.

Americans discard over 146 billion coffee cups annually, even with recycling, the paper itself can only be reused 2-3 times before the fibers are unusable and need to be discarded in local landfill sites.

Each of these new cups will be capable of extracting over 1 ton of CO2 out of the atmosphere annually, once planted. Currently the company is using the damaged fibers from local recycling centers, which would normally be too rough to implement back into a packaging product. They are using these fibers to make the most eco-friendly coffee cup available.

The consumer visits a participating coffee shop, has a cup of coffee, and then they can take the cup and plant it in a number of different environments, depending on which variety of seeds they have in their cup.

There are instructions on the bottom of the cup, it’s pretty straight forward. You unravel the cup, soak it in water for five minutes and then plant it and watch it grow.
So the morning cup of coffee can now help us wake up in more ways than one!