We've just announced the winner of the $10,000 Betacup jury prize, but an additional $10,000 has been set aside to be split among the top 5 community favorites. These are The Betacup and Betacup Campaign (one of the jury's honorable mentions), the Cuptokeep, the NextCup, the Neutral Resource Coffee Cup, and Networked Loyalty.

Community Prize #1: The Betacup & The Betacup Campaign (link) Design: Jesko Stoetzer

This entry combined a 100% biodegradable cup made from rice husks with a comprehensive options for an incentive program to encourage users to keep bringing their cups back. Cups might come with an RFID-embedded sleeve, helping users keep track of their use and get discounts every time they bring their rice husk cup in. Users could be further motivated by team competitions to save paper cups or by their individual usage to social causes. Every time the reusable cup is brought in, the money they save is donated to a charity.

Community Prize #2: Cuptokeep (link) Design: Katarina Mattsson & Angelica Lindgren

Cuptokeep is a new eco friendly take-away cup that you bring with you to the coffee shop. But this is not another of those clumsy reusable cups. Cuptokeep is made of an elastic plastic material with a construction that allows you to collapse the cup to 1/5 of its size. Cuptokeep has a similar design to a traditional paper cup for the simple reason that we want to maintain the same loveable feeling of drinking coffee. The drop safe lid makes the cup safe to fit in your pocket or handbag on your way to your coffee shop. Cuptokeep is the solution for coffee lovers to enjoy their coffee on the go with a green conscience.

Read more at Betacup.

Community Prize #3: The NextCup (link) Design: Wouter Middendorf

The NextCup concept tackles the waste and sustainability problem with an improved product combined with a new service. We argue that motivating people to use reusable cups is the way to attack the problems sooner rather than later. The cup-service combination solves the problems of currently used (or unused....) tumblers.    Shared ownership is the basis of the idea; for an extra (estimated) $3 deposit you can use the NextCup which is offered by Starbucks. After use the cup retains its value and can be exchanged for a new cup or your $3 deposit . Starbucks takes care of the cleaning. Durability and efficient washing of the cups is the way to a more sustainable and waste-free solution.   The cup is made of the durable and 100% recyclable polypropylene (PP). It is designed the way we already love it: just like a paper cup. Why change a winning team?

Community Prize #4: The Neutral Resource Coffee Cup (link) Design: AaronnLevine

The Neutral resource coffee cup presents an idea to take the areca leaf, a byproduct of the widely avaiable areca palm tree plantations, and use it to manufacture a natural coffee cup. The suggested process elimininates the energy and water intensive pulping process, rather cutting and shaping the cups through heat application, and then sealing with a biodegradable polymer glue.

Community Prize #4: Networked Loyalty (link) Design: joshbg2k

Networked coffee mugs provide an update to the old 10th-cup-free punch-card customer loyalty program. Our highly modular system allows any coffee shop to use one of our mug readers, link it to their name and physical location, and get started immediately with the program. Shops will sell RFID-enabled stickers at a low cost to customers who provide their own reusable coffee mug. Once the sticker is applied to a mug, that mug can be scanned at any participating coffee shop's reader to log refills anywhere the customer goes.