Occasionally we come upon a product that our world (read ‘we”) actually needs. One of these things is a reusable coffee cup that we can take to meetings without excessive bulging of our briefcase or  jacket pocket. A Canadian sustainability consultant, who now lives and works in California, seems to have developed such a product – a 16 ounce coffee cup that shrinks to a hockey puck size without leaking coffee between the collapsible rings when it is full.

Today’s news story violates our rule of not promoting initiatives until they actually exist but this coffee cup, being promoted on the social financing site Indiegogo, appears to be close enough to reality that the risk that it will not work seems low. Indiegogo, like Kickstarter, is a web site on which inventors and others sell products in advance of committing to manufacture. By pre-selling the inventors reduce or eliminate the need for loans to finance their start-up company or production line and at the same time they are testing the level of interest in their product. The technique, a variant on social networking, is called ‘crowd funding’. Bear in mind that there is a risk that the product will never appear.

Zip cup is not cheap for a plastic cup, especially with shipping to Canada included, but if it works then it will at long last be a portable travel cup that GallonDaily’s editor, and you, can take to meetings day in and day out. We have placed an order. You can too, at http://www.indiegogo.com/zipcup