- Notpla’s plastic-free coffee cup uses a seaweed-based coating in place of the thin plastic lining used in conventional takeaway cups.
- Research has found that drinking from plastic-lined cups once or twice a week can expose a person to up to 74,000 microplastic particles a year.
- Notpla has since secured a €4 million Horizon Europe grant to scale the technology across Europe.
A plastic-free coffee cup lined with seaweed could cut tens of thousands of microplastic particles a year from the drinks of regular takeaway coffee buyers.
Most takeaway coffee cups look like paper. Inside, they carry a thin plastic lining that stops the cup from leaking. When hot coffee is poured in, that lining can shed nanoplastic particles straight into the drink.
A 2024 study found that drinking from plastic-lined cups just once or twice a week could expose a person to up to 74,000 microplastic particles a year. Microplastics have now been detected in oceans, soil, air and human tissue, with research still under way into the long-term health impact.
That hidden plastic is what Notpla, a London-based packaging company, says its plastic-free coffee cup is designed to remove.
A seaweed coating in place of plastic
Notpla’s cup uses a coating made from seaweed for the surface that touches the drink. Seaweed grows without freshwater, fertiliser or arable land. It absorbs carbon as it grows, doesn’t compete with food crops, and supports marine habitats, according to the company.
The cup is not yet fully plastic-free – Notpla says a small amount of industry-standard adhesive is still used at the base and seam – but the lining that comes into contact with the coffee no longer contains plastic. A second-generation version using a natural adhesive is in development.
Scaling across Europe
The plastic-free coffee cup has been awarded a €4 million Horizon Europe grant to move the technology from pilot stage into industrial production. The funding will go toward advancing the seaweed coating, developing fully natural sealing materials, adapting the cup to existing paperboard production lines, and scaling up to larger coffee formats.
Notpla, which won the Earthshot Prize in 2022 for its work using seaweed to replace plastic, says the technology is designed to fit into existing manufacturing infrastructure rather than requiring entirely new factories – a practical detail that matters for how quickly the plastic-free coffee cup could reach café chains and supermarkets.
Global takeaway coffee consumption runs into the hundreds of billions of cups each year. Cutting plastic from even a fraction of those cups would shift the volume of microplastic exposure for millions of regular coffee drinkers, and lower the volume of fossil-fuel plastic flowing into waste streams.
