Startup Radically Reinvents The Disposable Coffee Cup, Eliminating Plastic Lids

Called Compleat, the all-paper design has a built-in lid with sipping spout.

I buy many cups of coffee and habitually cringe when reaching for a plastic lid. It’s pretty hypocritical to make a point of avoiding Styrofoam, only to slap a petroleum disc on a paper cup. (And yes, I know that carrying a travel mug would obviate the issue.) Fortunately a designer named Peter Herman has come up with a greener, all-paper disposable cup that folds closed like a takeout container to form a sipping spout.

Herman spent two years of his spare time–he’s an architect at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm Ellenzweig–and made close to a hundred prototypes in the process of refining the folding design he calls Compleat.

[ via fastcodesign.com ]