Coffee Leather

Self initiated project - CSM - 2019

Nominated for the MullenLowe NOVA Awards 2019

Nominated for the Maison/0 Green Trail Awards 2019

A material driven project with a focus on waste coffee grounds, where the aim was to find value where others see waste.

The project was inspired by the fact that to make a cup of coffee, only 0.2% of the coffee bean is used and the remaining 99.8% goes to waste. Worldwide we produce almost 9.5 million tons of waste coffee grounds every year and most of it ends up on landfill where every ton generates 14 tons of CO2. By using waste coffee grounds, that is already present, as a resource to make a new material, we can give value to something that is seen as useless.

As a result from a lot of experiments, a leather-like material was created with the aim to work as a sustainable alternative to traditional leather. The coffee grounds are mixed with 100% natural binders and made through an environmental friendly process and when it no longer fits its purpose, it can easily biodegrade back into nature.

The material moves the whole coffee production from a cradle to grave model into a cradle to cradle one but the project is also about starting conversations and raising awareness about how waste potentially could be used in the future.