They’re working on a glass-and-metal premium version. But it’ll cost a premium price, though.
$40 is already a premium price for what it is. It makes great coffee, but at the end of the day it’s a sturdy plastic plunger. Probably $4 landed.
I know it is, but production is almost completely hands off for something like this and plastic is cheap as dirt. US production runs wouldn’t be very expensive either. It’s a painfully simple product. You get like 5 pieces of plastic in a small box. You can find things that look more complicated at the dollar store.
That would be amazing. The device is cool, and seemed to work well from the reviews, but the plastic prevented me from buying it.
It’s made of polypropylene, partially recycled, extremely durable, and again fully recyclable if it does reach end of life at some point. It’s also certified BPA free - as opposed to the very first version (that was transparent and used a different plastic). BPA doesn’t leech into water unless exposed over a very long time anyway, and the average brew time is about 3-5 minutes; but it’s good they made the change anyway. If I remember correctly, BPA became an issue mostly due to being in baby toys that are chewed on, or bottles for beverages with a very long shelf life (e.g. water, that practically lasts forever) where it can leech out over time.
To me it’s the ideal travel brewer, since I can pre-grind my coffee and keep it in a tin box, where I can also put a stack of filter papers in to keep them from getting wet. Glass just wouldn’t work on the road, the risk of damage is simply too high. And you’ll anyway need to have a plastic plunger, or at the very least a plastic coated one, since you need to have a 100% tight seal.
At home I don’t use it often since I have a decent espresso machine, but I can see the merit as a daily driver in a small kitchen.
Edit: Oh btw, if the body was made of glass, I can totally see how it would shatter someday while applying force. You have to push with quite a bit of power the water through.
The amount of plastics that actually get recycled is about 1% worldwide, according to the Gulf Petrochemicals and Chemicals Association (GPCA) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214785321075969
The amount of Polypropylene that comes out of recycling is less than 1% of that 1% https://circularityinaction.com/2020PlasticRecyclingData
Unless you believe the stats from astroturf orgs like “The Recycling Partnership” that is funded by: The American Chemistry Council (i.e. the plastics manufacturers association), major producers of plastic packaging like Coke, PepsiCo, Uniliver, 3M, etc https://recyclingpartnership.org/funding-partners/
