EMU and Campus Recycling Gave Away
FREE MUGS
DURING CAMPUS EARTHDAY CELEBRATION, Thursday April 20, 2006 EMU FOOD SERVICE and UO CAMPUS RECYCLING GAVE AWAY FREE MUGS throughout the day!
If everybody on campus bought one beverage a day in a refill mug instead of a disposable cup, over 9 million cups would be saved a year ((20,500 students + 4500 faculty) X 365 days= 9,125,000 cups/year).
To encourage refillables, during Earth Week, University of Oregon Campus Recycling is kicking off its "Reduce Reuse Refill" campaign to educate members of the UO Community on the fact that cups are trash and that we can help reduce our impact on the environment by using refillable mugs.
Many people think disposable coffee cups are recyclable; they âre not! Coffee cups are a plastic lined coated in paper, this combination makes it trash. At Campus Recycling, we have noticed an abundance of coffee cups in both the paper and plastic recycling, when in actuality they belong in neither- they are trash.
To combat the notion that cups are recyclable, we are promoting it on t-shirts that we are handing out to students and faculty on campus. On the front we have the message "Go Refillable" and on the back we have the point that we want to hammer home, "Cups are trash". In addition to advertising with t-shirts, the Campus Recycling Trees will be out and about on campus catching people"green handed" and rewarding acts, like refillable mug use, with t-shirts and handing out free refill mugs to those who will use them.
The reason why Campus Recycling decided to begin educating the campus community on the topic of refill mugs is because cups are such a huge part of the campus waste stream. Disposable cups make up about 25% volume of waste stream from EMU food services (fall 2002 report through Environmental Studies Service Learning Program). This is a significant amount of material being sent to the dump every week.
A simple way to reduce the waste is to promote the use of refillable mugs. Currently, only 11% of beverages purchased in EMU Food Service outlets are purchased in a refillable mug (source: EMU Food Service Manager, John Costello). More than 9300 coffee cups, from campus services alone, are thrown away in a regular, school year, week.
When considering all the beverages that come into campus from other vendors, it is reasonable to estimate that at least twice the amount of cups get thrown away on campus in an average week. Aside from reducing waste there are other benefits to using refill mugs, at any EMU run coffee shop on campus there is a 25 cent discount on a beverage purchased in a mug and many other off campus vendors offer discounts on refillables as well.
Working with Campus Recycling on the Reduce Reduce Refill project is John Costello from the EMU Food Services. To help promote refill mugs, all of the campus coffee shop outlets will be handing out
free steel mugs randomly during Earth Day.
So when buying a morning cup o' Joe- bring your own mug, save some money and pat yourself on the back for doing a small part to help the environment.
Reduce Reuse Refill!
Key Facts:
~10,500 drinks sold out of EMU outlets in an average week
~1200 used refill mug = 11% = 9300 EMU cups trashed every week
23% volume of EMU waste stream = cups (12% coffee cups, 11% cold cups)
=2.25cubic yards (1.15 coffee cups)
If you purchase one drink a day for the year in a refillable mug, about half a cubic yard of trash is prevented.
Reduce Reuse REFILL
Heather Canapary
Education Coordinator
Campus Recycling
(541) 346-2354
edcoor@uoregon
E.I.C
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