GaeaStar Seeks to Solve the Single-Use Plastic Problem with an Ancient Indian Solution: Clay Lips
One of the biggest problems in the food and beverage industry is the waste produced by single-use plastics. Because of this, there has been a movement in the container industry over the past decade to develop non-biodegradable plastics made from plant-based materials, which suppliers say can be put in the compost bin or recycled. Although many of these methods promise to reduce the amount of plastic in the waste stream, some experts still consider them problematic.
That’s why a new company called GaeaStar is trying something completely different, aiming to eliminate single-use plastics not by creating environmentally friendly plastics, but by using a centuries-old Indian tradition: clay cups that crumble into dust.
The idea for the company first took shape when Sanjeev Mankotia moved to New Delhi in the mid-2000s. His cousin asked a street vendor for a tie, and when he finished drinking, he threw the cup down, breaking it into pieces. Mankotia, who was born in India but spent most of his life in the US, revealed that he was littering and asked why he did so.
He said, ‘It’s made of dirt, why do you care?'” Mankotia recalled in an interview with The Spoon. “And I didn’t have an answer to that.”
He realized that these pottery and their method of disposal was an Indian tradition, and he wondered if this could work elsewhere.
“I thought, ‘Why can’t we do this in the West instead of having these paper cups with plastic inside?'” Mankotia said. “And basically, a better user experience.”
At that time, Mankotia, an engineer by training, was a consultant in the financial industry. Over the next decade and a half, he continued his consulting work while figuring out how to turn this container idea into a successful business. He finally decided to pursue this idea after feeling that he had achieved all he could in his consulting career.
“I felt like I climbed that mountain in consulting, with C-suite positions,” Mankotia explained. “And I felt like I had this vision, and I wanted to start working on something for the next generation.”
He knew that Indian containers were handmade by local artisans, who found clay in the rivers and made hundreds of them a day to dry in the sun. However, Mankotia knew that this approach would need to be adapted to the Western market, where he envisioned a company supplying restaurants and coffee shops with these boxes.
Using his experience as a consultant, where he encountered additive manufacturing, Mankotia knew that a 3D printer capable of producing these containers at high quality would provide a solution. However, none of the printers on the market were designed to produce the high volume required to make thousands of cups every day.
So Mankotia decided to build his own.
“We made a printer that can print one in less than 30 seconds,” said Mankotia. “And we want to try to get it under 10 seconds and closer to being used.”
After Mankotia and other engineers built the first printer, they realized they would need a system to produce the cups closer to the customer. So they started designing a micro-factory where they would print the cups and dry and cure them during the day using an oven.
The company’s first small factory was launched in Berlin in 2022, and it was in the same city where they held their first pop-up and quickly sold the 3500 cups they made. After that, they officially launched in Berlin and are now making tens of thousands of containers a month, including ice cream cups for a German ice cream shop called Rosa Canina.
With a new infusion of capital from a $6.5M seed funding round, the company has its sights set on the US market. Mankotia says the first market they will open is in San Francisco, where they will build a 200 square-meter micro-factory that will eventually have up to 4 printers. He believes that once the small factory is up and running, the company should be able to produce up to four million cups per year at each location.
As for the cups themselves, one obvious concern is whether they can withstand the handling of the consumer because no one wants the drinking vessel to break when dropped or squeezed too much. But, according to Mankotia, these bowls are ten times stronger than a paper cup and strong enough to be put in the dishwasher. The company believes that others will keep and reuse the cups when they take them home. The point of it all, says Mankotia, is that now they have a choice without guilt.
In the future, Mankotia wants to continue building printers that can eventually produce mugs locally, where a worker can make mugs at the push of a button. To do that, he said the company is working to eventually incorporate technology into a printing machine that can quickly treat ships. This technology involves electric pulses similar to those used in microwaves, and the company is currently working with some German research institutes that have the technology.
The company’s first partner in the US is Verve Coffee Roasters. The coffee roaster will offer its customers in selected cafes the option of having a GaeaStar container when ordering certain food and beverages. GaeaStar says it will use this partnership to fine-tune its first prototype container “to meet the needs of Verve and other US businesses.”
