The Morning Perch

A circular bird feeder made from spent coffee grounds.

Client: Self Initiated

Services: Product Design, Design for Manufacture, Circular Design, Sustainable Design. 

Brief: As a coffee obsessive, I use in the region of 25kg+ of coffee beans annually. A busy coffee shop can go through this much coffee a day (4 tonnes annually). Spent grounds can be a great addition to your compost but this needs to be done in balance so as not to overly effect the PH level or nutrients in your soil. Industrial composting in the UK isn't well setup for this currently. So what else can we do with spent coffee grounds? 

Years ago, I ran a series of experiments to see if I could add coffee grounds to basic bio-plastic recipe’s to create a textural coffee bio-plastic. The results were rough at first, but over time, I could see the material’s potential. Fast forward to today and companies like Kaffeeform are turning spent coffee into tangible, desirable products, like coffee cups. Proof that waste can become something people cherish.

What?

The market is saturated with keep cups and everyday items - for good reason. 

Over half of UK households with outdoor space now feed wild birds, and the global bird feeding market is projected to nearly double by 2031. Participation in wildlife observation has surged, with events like the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch attracting hundreds of thousands of people, while lockdowns and urban living have increased the desire for daily contact with nature. People are seeking ways to support biodiversity, reconnect with their surroundings, and bring mindful, slow-living rituals into their everyday lives - making a thoughtfully designed bird feeder a perfect tool to meet these trends.

The defined design language for this project was clean, playful and designed to be perceived as a celebration of the coffee bioplastic material as a premium material. Something you would want to take care of. 

With a focus on materials, if this coffee-based bioplastic concept replaced a traditional plastic and metal wire bird feeder, there would be the potential to reduce the overall product carbon footprint from around 5.5kg CO2e to around 1.7kg CO2e - a reduction of nearly 60%, purely thanks to materials choices.

Thoughtful design can impact more positively.