Betacup Challenge offers $20K for a better disposable coffee cup

By Andrew Nusca | March 17, 2010, 11:25 AM PDT

Some 58 billion paper coffee cups are tossed in unrecycled trash each year.

Social entrepreneur Toby Daniels wants to change that.

On April 1, he’s launching an online contest — a collaborative solicitation, really — to design a disposable cup that reduces the environmental impact of our collective coffee cup habit.

Sure, you can always use a reusable coffee mug. But that’s rather inconvenient for most — that’s why disposables exist.

The name of the contest? The Betacup Challenge.

The prize for your idea: $20,000 in cash, courtesy of sponsor Starbucks, which has a goal of serving 100 percent of its beverages in reusable or recyclable cups by 2015.

First place gets $10,000, and five runners-up receive $2,000 each.

Here’s Daniels explaining why he came up with the contest:

Got an idea? Sign up and submit it here. The contest ends on June 15.

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