Say you see a post on Reddit. Someone's excited about an edible coffee cup. Biodegradable, apparently. You eat it after you've finished your latte.
And the reaction is inevitable: here we go again.
Don't get me wrong - reducing waste matters. Reusable bags gather dust in plenty of cupboards, forgotten on the very trips to the supermarket they were meant for. But there's something about the endless parade of 'revolutionary' coffee cup concepts that invites a bit of cynicism.
Mind you, it's not about knocking the enthusiasm. The person posting is usually clearly passionate - Google Form and everything. But this movie has played before. Several times this year alone, in fact.
The Edible Cup Problem
Let's think about this practically. You've just had a hot coffee. The cup is warm, slightly soggy, and smells like a wet biscuit that's been sitting in a puddle. And now you're supposed to eat it?
I don't know about you, but the last thing anyone wants after a coffee is a mouthful of warm, coffee-flavoured cardboard. Even if it's made of something nicer - wafer, biscuit, whatever - there's a reason we don't eat our plates after dinner.
The idea sounds great on paper. Or in a Reddit post. But the reality is always messier.
We've Been Here Before
Remember the coffee cup that turned into a plant pot? You were supposed to tear it up, bury it, and grow a tree. That one showed up on Kickstarter about five years ago. Never spotted a single one in the wild.
Then there was the cup made from recycled coffee grounds. Smelled amazing, apparently. But it leaked after ten minutes. Someone actually reviewed it on Amazon - gave it two stars and said it was 'structurally unsound'. Paraphrasing, but you get the idea.
And let's not forget the 'cup rental' schemes. You pay a deposit, use the cup, return it to a special bin. The bins were always full. Or empty. Or missing entirely.
Good intentions. Shoddy execution.
It's reminiscent of something Jolly Good Apps built recently.
Why Jolly Good Apps Built Review Radar for Amazon
It's easy to get tired of seeing products with thousands of five-star reviews that are clearly fake. You know the ones - glowing praise for a potato peeler that's actually a blunt piece of plastic. Or a 'premium' yoga mat that smells like a chemical factory.
So Jolly Good Apps made Review Radar for Amazon. It's a browser extension that analyses reviews and spots patterns that suggest fakery. It gives you a trust score. Simple as that.
It's not perfect. Nothing is. But it helps cut through the noise. And it's free to try. The Pro version is £15 a year, which is less than a month of fancy coffee.
The point is: it's a tool that actually solves a problem, rather than creating a new one. An edible coffee cup creates a new problem (eating a soggy cup) while trying to solve an old one (landfill waste). That's not progress. That's just shifting the mess around.
What Actually Works
The best solutions are boring. They don't get upvoted on Reddit. They don't have Kickstarter campaigns with slick videos.
They're just: use a reusable cup. Remember to bring it. Wash it occasionally.
That's it. That's the revolution.
Or: buy coffee from places that use genuinely compostable cups. Not 'biodegradable in 200 years' cups. The ones that actually break down in your council's food waste system.
Or, here's a wild idea: drink your coffee slightly faster so you don't need a lid. Saves plastic. Saves money. Saves your sanity from trying to eat a cup.
Anyway. The edible coffee cup person isn't wrong to try. But it's worth staying sceptical of anything that sounds too clever. The simple stuff is usually what sticks.