From coffee cups to plant pots
Coffee cups are estimated to be the second-largest contributor to litter waste after plastic bottles. It is estimated Australians use 1 billion disposable coffee cups each year.
We know, this is a shocking figure but it is also the reason why Flavia Gimena, who moved from Argentina to Melbourne in 2017, decided to do something about it.
While studying English, Flavia decided to join a micro business course at North Melbourne Language & Learning (NMLL), where she had the opportunity to receive business mentorship for two consecutive years and learned how to use her skills as a graphic and fashion designer in a more holistic way to become a change-maker.
One day, in 2018, Flavia was helping a friend of hers to clean some offices located in Melbourne CBD. One of the main tasks was changing the bags of the rubbish bins, which always were full of a tremendous amount of coffee cups. Flavia remembered that every day, they had to throw away the two largest-size bags with just coffee cups; this was the eye-opener, she knew that her mission would be to find a way to innovate using those coffee cups.
Flavia's friends started saving the coffee cups for her every week, nearly between 100 and 200 of them. Since she was living at Ringwood, she had to travel carrying these two bags full of coffee cups every Friday afternoon from the CBD to her house, which took her almost 1 hour and a half. However, this long trip didn’t stop Flavia. She wanted to be known as “the woman who makes rubbish disappear”, and show people that coffee cups can be processed, recycled, and compostable.
This is how ECO ENVIRO CONCEPTS, Flavia's business idea was born. Currently, she designs pots, germination cubes, and punnets from recycled used coffee cups through an eco-friendly designing process.
A regular coffee cup is made from plastic lines and paper. ECO ENVIRO CONCEPTS separate the plastic from the paper through a mechanical technique. The paper is ground to obtain a pulp that is used to design the molds of the products. Throughout the entire process, the water used is rainwater.
Moreover, ECO ENVIRO CONCEPTS offers coffee cups collection and upcycling services. Currently, there are four collection stations located in different towns of Victoria, designed to use pipes made of recycled plastic from the lids and liners of the coffee cups, metal, and recycled wood. Flavia is always looking for strategies to offer plastic-free solutions and her efforts recently allowed her to get the Australian made, Australian grown logo in most of the ECO ENVIRO CONCEPTS products.
ECO ENVIRO CONCEPTS mission is to recycle 180.000 coffee cups per year and diverse them into a compostable product that balances the 1.666.667 trees that companies cut to make 25.000 tons of paper every year. If you want to join this mission, visit their website, and check their products out. You will love it if you are the kind of person who loves doing your gardening and growing your food at home!
https://www.ecoenviroconcepts.com
https://www.instagram.com/ecoeconcepts/