I think the round plastic coffee stirrer is kind of dumb. Its shape makes it terrible at creating enough turbulence to actually stir coffee (often requiring two, especially for something like hot chocolate) and it’s little bit of a waste.
For class, we were asked to breathe new life into an object we discard daily, and to think about how to improve it. Plastic bags were given as the example, and I chose coffee stirrers. After cutting, stretching, tearing, melting, twisting and tying coffee stirrers, I came up with a few uses. Here are a couple:
The first was decorative office plants:
And a brush/pen combo for cleaning out keyboard debris:
Then I got to thinking, why not combine two products in one? Sweetener + coffee stirrer, thereby eliminating the waste of the sugar packet. My concept product of a sweetener-filled coffee stirrer with a breakable end was created by melting the ends and perforating one end to make it easy to break.
And my computer mock-up:
The little “paddles” help break the end off as well as stir the liquid.
