While a standard reusable travel mug might get you a discount at your local coffee shop, the reality is that single-use disposable cups are still as pervasive as ever, piling up in landfills with your name still written in marker on their exterior.
This problem led the creative minds at Jun Aizaki’s creative design studio, Crème, to ask: “What if we could grow vessels instead of manufacturing them?”
The result is The Gourd Project: An innovation that uses 3D-printed molds to shape gourds to take the form of cups and vessels as they grow.
“We are in an urgent need to shift our current cradle-to-grave paradigm. Take-away cups and packaging are a standard of everyday life but they produce an incredible amount of waste that ends up in landfills and contaminates our precious waterways and landscapes,” a design statement from Crème states.
“What if aside from being a material resource, nature could also provide a solution for this worldwide issue?”
To execute this idea, the studio looked for a fast-growing plant that would fruit each season. It led them to gourds, which have a strong outer skin and fibrous inner flesh. Once dried, they become watertight, making them an ideal replacement for to-go cups.
This isn’t a new discovery; people around the world still dry and use gourds as receptacles like cups, but Crème wants to take the technology to a more modern and replicable scale.
“Crème is exploring this centuries-old craft through a modern lens to create a product that we believe can be mass produced while maintaining its sustainability,” the studio writes.
“Through the use of 3D-printed molds, we can grow gourds into customizable functional shapes, such as cups and flasks that can be composted instead of filling up landfills like the plastic alternative.”
Aizaki was already inspired by gourd containers used in Asia, South America, and Africa, as well as watermelons, which are often shaped into box-like containers in Japan to make them easier to stack and transport.
“If there was a way to control that process and create something that’s more uniform and more predictable, we thought it could potentially become an alternative to the way we make things,” Aizaki told Fast Company
After a handful of prototypes, the studio created a 3D-printed mold that mimics the silhouette of a classic faceted glass cup. Aizaki calls it the “HyO-Cup.”
They are 100% biodegradable and can be discarded or composted with food waste, since they are made without synthetic materials or chemicals.
At first, the design team experimented by growing a few gourds in a backyard garden, and later, at a farm. With uncontrollable variables like weather and pests, they decided to move things inside. Now, the Gourd Project Indoor Lab aims to make a more consistent product.
Although the cups are not available on the market yet, The Gourd Project’s website displays a banner indicating that a Kickstarter campaign for the project is coming soon.
“Like all new projects, we are starting small and hope to scale up to increase quantity and lower the price per gourd,” Crème told Dezeen, “so that the HyO-Cup can be a viable challenger to the plastic waste industry.”
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Header image by Chris Collie for Crème
