What if you didn’t have to throw away disposable coffee pods?

According to the National Coffee Association in 2020, 40% of coffee drinkers owned a single-cup coffee brewing machine. While disposable coffee pods have made making coffee convenient incredibly convenient, they have also had a monumental impact on the amount of waste entering our landfills and oceans.

While it is easy to use disposable coffee pods, it’s not nearly as easy to recycle them. While comprised of recyclable components, they actually cannot be recycled as-is. In under 10 seconds, a new tool called the Cup Hero completely separates the plastic cup, aluminum foil lid, paper filter, coffee grounds, and internal plastic ring in such a way that every component can be sorted, processed, and recycled. The Cup Hero’s primary objective is to reduce the amount of single-use, disposable plastic that enters our landfills and empower individuals to adopt more sustainable practices. Being able to also compost the coffee grounds and paper filter is another perk!

The Cup Hero currently exists as a highly functional prototype and the next step is to make it a commercially available solution for coffee pod users to use in their homes. The Cup Hero team is running a Kickstarter in the near future to raise the funds needed to launch this product into the market. To learn more about when you can get your own Cup Hero, please check out our website www.thecuphero.com and leave us your email. It’s simple to do and an easy way to stay updated!

While we all get by with a little help from our friends, the Cup Hero project has primarily been a solo venture by Connor Feeney. Connor has prior work experience as a quality engineer, product design engineer, and an innovation analyst within the medical device industry. Connor has a network of mentors and connections that span the various disciplines needed to bring an innovation like the Cup Hero to life (manufacturing, marketing, intellectual property, distribution, and finance to name a few). He has a masters degree in engineering from Northwestern University and in high school won the coveted senior superlative award “Most Likely to Save the Planet.”