Small, colourful and stylish, coffee capsules (pods in bar machines) have been a marketing success, with billions sold every year. While there are number of recycling programmes for aluminium based capsules, other single-use capsules like plastic-based K-Cups are not recyclable, thus adding to the planet’s big plastic waste problem. (See Great Pacific Garbage Patch).

Singapore-based industrial Eason Chow however is rethinking the concept of the coffee capsule with his prototype for flavored capsule packaging that simply disappears by being dissolved in the coffee itself.
The container for the prototypical capsule is made with a type of hard-sugar, with the thickness of the container varying according to the desired flavour. An optional layer of milk coats the inside of the capsules. Designed to work within a specially adapted coffee machine, hot water flows over the capsules as they slowly disappear into the brewed coffee.

Chow’s elegant capsules are designed in a variety of rounded forms that are inspired by candies, bringing joy along with social responsibility into the process of brewing coffee.

Els Zijlstra