Invention that helps coffee workers praised

David Howells

09/12/2011 11:37:05

An American designer has come up with a novel invention to help coffee pickers deal more easily with the back-breaking work, smartplanet.com reports.

It’s easy to buy beans for espresso coffee machines without thinking of the work that got the product from the crop to the cup. However, often the work is tough on the backs of those doing the picking, which prompted one student to give thought to a way of changing this.

Currently, pickers use standard buckets to drop the picked coffee beans into that they strap around their waists. These, however, can dig into pickers’ thighs and the edges are sharp and uncomfortable to handle.

In light of this, student Gabriela Ravassa created Coco (Colombian slang for “picking container”), a bucket that, too, is strapped around the waist but features a much more ergonomic design.

“I chose to stick with the standard bucket since it maintains the picking techniques and tools that have been successfully used for more than 170 years,” she told fastcodedesign.com.

“However, I’ve made radical changes.”

The changes include a more supportive waist band, similar in design to those weightlifters and labourers wear, as well as an indented bucket that follows the contours of a person’s legs when they walk. This will prevent the chafing and bruising that would affect pickers non-stop, it is claimed.

Whilst the new buckets are $5 (£3.20) more expensive per unit than the current designs, Ravassa is hoping she can consider plantation owners to fork out the extra as they currently pay for a number of different tools aimed at lowering the discomfort felt by pickers. With the new bucket, however, these add-ons, and the buckets they fit to, could be a thing of the past.