Incentive
A reusable, sustainable product to make great tasting filtered coffee.
Reasoning
This product was developed in Copacabana, Bolivia to allow us to filter coffee in a sustainable fashion. Traditional throw-away coffee filters as found in Europe are not to be found here so we had to find a way of reaching the same goal… Great tasting coffee. Ground coffee was available and the closest product we found in a shop was a sieve. These do work, but don’t work that well from previous experience. Coffee grains get through and the purpose of having the filter gets thrown out of the window.
Ingredients
- 1 Old t-shirt or sleeve of a t-shirt
- 1 Pair of scissors
- 1 Small sewing needle
- Colored thread to your taste
Preparation Method
We cut off the sleeves from Alex’s t-shirt that we decided we would turn into a vest. This gave us enough material to make about four coffee filters. We only made one to test our new idea.
- Cut a square piece of cloth from the material you have.
- Fold one side over to the other so you get a cone shape and cross-stitch one side.
- Cut off any excess materials that are not required for functionality.
Finished Products
 The finished and tested filter |
 The finished vest |
Problems and Issues
We found that the first few cups of coffee had a strange t-shirt or arm pit smell and taste to it, but just like any new coffee machine it takes a good 10 cups to get the required taste. You just need to bite your tongue and get through the first ones before things start getting better. After 10 cups we had a great tasting coffee and since then on, it keeps on getting better ;)
Finally we developed a fully functional, green product with just the materials we had with us. If the stitching is done well, this filter will get you through plenty of excellent cups of coffee.
