A second life for every café’s waste stream.
Grounded — In development
Grounded turns spent espresso pucks into a workable composite material — pressed into reusable cups, plates and small homewares, then returned to the cafés they came from. The whole loop closes inside a city.
- a. A material from a daily waste stream
Spent espresso pucks bound with plant-based resin into a workable composite.
- b. Reusable, returnable
Cups, plates and homewares designed for café deposit-and-return loops, not for landfill.
- c. Café-scale partnership
Independents, chains and roasters become both the input and the retail surface.
A waste stream every café in the country produces, every single day.
A busy café in Cape Town generates 8–15 kg of spent coffee grounds a day. Multiplied across the country, that’s tens of thousands of tonnes of high-quality organic feedstock heading to landfill.
The brief: turn that waste into a material the same café will gladly buy back — in a form their customers actually want to use.
From café waste back to café shelf.
The process is deliberately simple: a small dry-mix-press line that fits inside a workshop. Each batch traces back to the cafés it came from, so partners can see exactly how their grounds re-enter the world.
- 1. Collect. Spent grounds picked up daily from partner cafés, kept dry and uncontaminated.
- 2. Dry. Low-temperature tumble-drying drops moisture below the binding threshold without scorching the grounds.
- 3. Bind. Mixed with a plant-based resin sourced locally. No petroleum-based plastics in the recipe.
- 4. Press. Heat-pressed in a tooled mould; finished, branded and shipped back to the café network.
Built for the café counter first.
The first product line covers the formats a barista uses every shift. Each piece carries a faint coffee scent and a fine speckled finish — the material doesn’t pretend to be ceramic, and that’s the point.
When pieces wear out, they go back to Grounded for grinding and re-pressing. Material stays in circulation; nothing earns a one-way trip to landfill.
The everyday espresso-and-flat-white format. Brand-stampable lid optional.
Cappuccino, latte, cold brew. Pairs with a saucer or stands on its own.
Same material body as the cup; nests in stacks of twelve for back-of-house storage.
Plates, planters and small bowls for cafés that want the material on the retail shelf.
Pilot loop forming — partner cafés open
We’re building the first Grounded pilot loop with a small group of independent cafés in Cape Town. Roasters, café groups and material designers welcome.