Hublot, Nestlé Nespresso Unveils Luxury Watch Made From Used Coffee Grounds, Recycled Coffee Pods

Hublot Swiss luxury watchmaker, has formed an unlikely partnership with Nestlé Nespresso SA, a maker of coffee machines and coffee pods. They have created a limited-edition luxury watch made from recycled coffee capsules and coffee grounds.

Hublot x Nespresso’s collaborative watch called the “Big Bang Unico Nespresso Origin” is being sold for $24,100 or about €25,200 per piece, and there will only be 200 units of the unique timepiece. UK’s Wired reported that the companies used aluminum capsules and coffee grounds in making the case and strap of the watch.

It was said that Nespresso agreed to the partnership with Hublot because while the coffee capsules that it makes generate little amounts of greenhouse gases compared to filtered coffee, the waste they create is still a big problem for the company. Coffee capsules were recorded to make up around 576,000 metric tons of waste worldwide.

With the watch project, Nespresso and Hublot worked together with the aim of further minimizing waste. This is also part of their respective sustainability efforts.

To make Hublot’s Big Bang Unico Nespresso Origin, they have used leftover coffee beans and recycled aluminum Nespresso pods. The design, materials, and color of the timepiece represent the sustainability that they are trying to convey, giving the luxury watch a whole new meaning.

The watch has two straps that are made with eco-friendly materials. The first strap is made with 4.1% recycled coffee grounds and 8.2% recycled rubber, while the other strap is totally recycled and made by SingTex, a Taiwanese company that manufactures a fabric called SCafé (95% polyester and five percent used coffee grounds).

“The Big Bang Unico Nespresso Origin is a watch born out of a close collaboration between the product development teams of Nespresso and Hublot, two pioneering Swiss brands, both of whom were founded in the 1980s,” Hublot’s chief executive officer, Ricardo Guadalupe, said in a press release. “This is a watch that delivers three world firsts: a symbol of the infinite possibilities for upcycling: a Big Bang made from the recycled aluminum of Nespresso coffee capsules; the first watch with a rubber strap containing 4.1% recycled coffee grounds from Nespresso capsules and 8.2% recycled rubber; and finally, the first watch with a Velcro strap made with SCafé.”

He added that “It took the R&D teams a whole year to achieve the uniformity of color of the watch’s seven different materials, find the right balance of ingredients and perform the quality and durability testing on all the product components.”

Photo by: Hublot Press Release