Hasta La Ideas

Did you know that in North America, we consume 58 billion paper coffee cups a year, most of which are not recycled and end up in landfills? And that reusable coffee mugs, the only alternative, have an adoption rate of less than 2%? These mugs are designed to travel with coffee from place to place (usually your home to work), not for on-the-go coffee consumers that order from a counter every day—they’re bulky, hard to clean and inconvenient to carry around.

To address this problem, Toby Daniels and product development firm Mutopo founded Betacup, an open innovation challenge that asks designers to rethink the reusable coffee mug with the goal of eliminating paper cup wastage. The challenge will launch in 2010, but in the meantime, they are working hard to raise the money to fund a $20,000 prize, large enough to “attract and incentivize the world’s best designers.” You can help them out on kickstarter: contribute $2 (the equivalent of donating a cup of coffee to the cause), $20 and receive a commemorative betacup, $200 and get tickets to the award ceremony, or $2,000 and join the panel of judges.

More information about Betacup here.

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