With this fragrant stamp, Austrian Post is once again setting new standards in the particularly innovative design of stamps.
Coffee is indispensable for many people whether drunk early in the morning to wake them up or as a reviving aromatic drink throughout the day. But once the coffee has been drunk, we are left with the coffee grounds, a valuable material that it is a shame to just throw away. Dried coffee grounds can be scattered as fertiliser and also help ward off various pests, as well as being used in cosmetics as peelings or in soap to neutralise odours, for example.
Coffee leather can also be made from the grounds, and it is from this that this original stamp block is made. For this, fine, dried coffee grounds were sieved onto a natural fleece, sprayed with an ecological binding agent and pressed into a thin sheet in multiple stages. This vegan coffee leather is flexible and tear-resistant, and, what is more, not only does it have the slightly grainy texture of ground coffee, but it also naturally smells of coffee. After printing, an adhesive film was applied and the stamp cut out in the shape of a coffee bean. The narrow stripe down the centre represents the groove that is typical for a coffee bean, while also reminding us of the delicious aroma of a bowl of hot coffee. Upcycling thus turned coffee grounds that had been collected from offices and hospitals into a new philatelic product that will add a hint of that delicious coffee smell to every item of post and delight everyone, not just coffee drinkers.
