To take advantage of the 200,000 tons of coffee husks produced annually in Colombia from the coffee that is sold, three people from Antioquia invented a paper with which they make cups made from coffee husks, replacing plastic, cardboard and other types of cups, offering an environmentally sustainable solution to Colcafé, a company of the Nutresa Group recently purchased by the Gilinskis and their Arab partners.
The idea, which has already been recognized and patented in the US as an invention, occurred to Juan Diego Ruiz Saldarriaga, Director of Engineering of the Colombian Coffee Industry SAS (Colcafé) who presented it to Jorge Alonso Echeverri Muñetones, Director of Innovation of that same company as part of the activities of an internal human talent development program that they call Out of box (get out of the box).
Both, as part of the Colcafé company and after signing confidentiality agreements, went to the Metropolitan Technological Institute of Medellín (ITM) where the researcher and teacher Juan Carlos Posada Correa bet on the idea of finding a sustainable and profitable solution to the waste from the production and marketing of roasted and ground coffee in its more than one hundred years of existence. It was also to be in line with the environmental urgencies of the planet and to take advantage of coffee cisco as a nature-friendly but also profitable solution.
Who is behind this invention that replaces plastic cups?
Originally from Copacabana (Antioquia) and a resident of Envigado since he was a teenager, Juan Carlos Posada Correa trained as an industrial instrumentation technologist at the Jaime Isaza Cadavid Polytechnic, an industrial engineer from the Catholic University of the East, studied a Master’s degree at the Pontifical Bolivarian University and is completing a doctorate in Engineering.
He has dedicated his life to innovation and development in different products. Recently graduated, he joined the Institute of Plastics and Rubber created by Acoplásticas and which operates within the Eafit University of Medellín where he worked for 17 years.
In 2010, he became a professor at ITM and in the line of sustainable manufacturing he began to research different types of organic waste and its possible application to generate added value, such as rice by-products.
Jorge Alonso Echeverri Muñetones, Director of Innovation at Colcafé, has been in the company for 18 years working in business knowledge management and engineer Juan Diego Ruiz Saldarriaga has been the director of the engineering area for several years. They have not hesitated to look for allies and find support from entities such as Colciencias, today the Ministry of Sciences.
With shell cups, researchers seek to reduce the consumption of plastic and cardboard cups, estimated at 5,000 million units annually in Colombia alone, and generate new knowledge that can be applied to the solution of social, environmental and business needs.
After almost a decade of research on the different by-products of the coffee production chain, the inventors also managed to get the Superintendency of Industry and Commerce to patent their invention in 2021 after having been patented in the United States. A revolutionary invention that has been disseminated internationally and was among the six finalists of the fourth season of the reality show Discovery Channel’s The Great Inventor Colombia.
In addition to this, they have developed an agro-input from coffee grounds, also known as coffee stubble, which is generating positive carbon and not just neutral in terms of environmental indicators.
10,000 cups made from coffee husks will be ready in September
In September, Colcafé will distribute 10,000 biodegradable cups and trays at the Colombiaplast fair, produced by a Cali ally as a pilot, since the cellulose made from coffee husks is also used to make cutlery and various biodegradable items used by millions in coffee shops around the world. Colcafé also hopes to test the cups in Nutresa-owned Novaventa coffee machines. They also propose to obtain the green seal.
Personal and professional rewards represent the culmination of this stage for researchers because they are contributing a grain of sand to solve a problem for the productive sector; it is tangible teamwork.
This is how they advance in the fight against plastic pollution and especially if we take into account that since last June 7, single-use plastic was prohibited in Colombia and the measure began with the restriction on the production and sale of disposable cups. plastic, among others.
With the patent, ITM and Colcafé will have the exclusivity to control the manufacturing, distribution and sale of the biodegradable cup, which will also allow them to form strategic alliances with companies interested in the commercialization of biodegradable disposable cups made of coffee hulls or develop new applications. .
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