The initial concept garnered a lot of attention – winning an international design contest, getting featured on BBC, Fast Company, and National Geographic, as well as exhibited in a national museum in Taiwan.
In 2019, Tom and Kaanur Papo, both longtime friends, decided to work together on making the cup become a reality.
Hundreds of prototypes later, and with the help of peers and mentors – they arrived at the perfect lid-free paper cup, and Unocup was created.
Unocup’s design maximizes ease of folding for customers and baristas, spill proofing, cost-saving, manufacturability, and has a sleek modern look.
Unocup envisions a future where plastic lids are eliminated for good, preventing them from littering the earth and entering our oceans.
Unocup Missions
8.25 million tons of plastic waste enter the ocean each year. These types of plastics take a million years to decompose, and cause significant harm to the planet.
With Unocup, you could help the planet by getting rid of the plastic lids that create tens of millions of pounds in plastic waste each year, and still enjoy your coffee on the go, even better than before.
Easy folding and reopening
Closing Unocup is as easy as 1,2,3. Simply fold over each flap and insert the tab. Opening is as easy as a press of a button, literally. No need to timidly pop off a lid in fear of the potential mayhem.
Customers and baristas don’t have to fiddle around for a lid, making getting your coffee even easier. No more worrying about your lid popping out, or whether or not to take one. With Unocup, all you need is in one place.
Ergonomic Design
Unocup’s unique shape fits straight into your palm. Comfortable and pleasant to hold, Unocup’s uniform structure creates a strong and consistent body that won’t cave under pressure, unlike traditional cups.
Unocup’s drinking spout is designed to fit your lips perfectly and create the smoothest drinking experience. Traditional plastic lids feature a rigid opening that feels unnatural, while Unocup’s curved drinking spout guides your beverage fluidly to your mouth.
Spill resistsant
Since the first prototype in 2015, and the 800 prototypes that followed it, we’ve ran with, shaken, and stirred all the cups we made in order to ensure we arrived at a design that was ready for all of your rush time needs (and, well, sometimes clumsiness, we’re only human).
Save Cost, Energy and Time
Unocup’s design is optimized for mass-production using existing cup-making machinery. Using Unocup will yield significant cost and energy savings in manufacturing, storage, and transportation that would otherwise be spent on plastic lids.
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