Starbucks' Cheap ReUsable Cups

Today I found out that this exists:

It's a reusable cup that only costs a buck!

I've always thought that it would be neat if cafes would charge the standard 2 dollars for people that had re-usable cups and an extra dollar for paper cup customers.  This would be sort of a penalty tax for not bringing a reusable cup in.  Starbucks is taking this in a different direction however.  For 1 dollar, you can hang on to this cup, wash it, and re-use it again.  When you bring it in for a refill, you'll receive a 10 cent discount.  The cup pays for itself after 10 visits!  I'm not sure how long these cups last before they break down, but they look and feel tough.   I may have to buy a cup tomorrow and test it's durability!

Starbucks aims to convert 5% of their paper cup users over to plastic reusable or travel mug customers by 2015.    It's great to see that a huge coffee corporation keeping stats on it's impact on garbage and energy consumption.  Starbucks reports that they've seen a 55 percent increase in travel mug use over the past three years.  The coffee giant is an environmentally conscious company and actively engages with this customers via social media.

I really hope that more consumers helps Starbucks meets their environmental goals over the next few years.  For more information on Starbucks' commitment to sustainability and it's impact to the environment please head to www.starbucks.com/responsibility/environment for more info.

Shopping Cart Cups

I'm going to start posting my theories on why I think some cups end up in some common places around Fredericton. 

For instance, the shopping cart coffee cup.

Often times I will find cups in shopping carts, usually abandoned in the middle of an empty parking lot.

What are these people thinking?  That the magic garbage fairy is going whisk this cup off to the garbage can 12 feet away??

I think 1 of 2 things is happening in this photograph.  

1.  A person took a cart to their car to unload some Zellers goodies.   They went to return the cart but didn't want to smoosh the cup between the carts so they took it out and rested it on top of the cart-line hoping that the garbage fairy would grab it because they left their car running, and they're freakin cold!

2. ...or... some jerk was just passing by and didn't want to bring their coffee inside a store, or into their car so they left it here and said "I'm just going to leave this right here, for the garbage fairy".

Is it crazy to think that there should be a $1.00 tax on every non-recycle coffee cup sold in Fredericton?

New Year's Resolution: #cleanupfred 2013

Sooooooooooo some people have been asking about my coffee cup project now that 1 year has passed since I first started picking up discarded coffee cups.

Every time I give the same answer: "The project is on hiatus."

Which is code for:  I failed to accomplish the mission.

Last year I vowed (on camera) to pick up discarded coffee cups every day for an entire year.  The aim was to collect as many coffee cups as I could find.  I would photograph the cup, post it to flickr and store it in my garbage bag.

The first 3 months was easy.  At first it was difficult to ignore the awkwardness of picking up a flattened coffee cup off of King Street on a busy noon hour in front of dozens of bustling Frederictonians.  I did however, have some encouragement from some loyal CBC fans who excitingly asked if I was the "Tim Hortons guy" a day after an interview of yours truly was shown on the 6:00 news.  The first few months was fun, but it got gross and time consuming.

Last Earth Day, I helped plan a community garbage pick up with Alycia Moorehouse, Suzie Lowthers, Tim Hortons, Picaroon's, and Feelsgood.ca and some awesome volunteers!  I was awarded an artists grant from Feelsgood.ca and helped organize free burgers, coffee, donuts, and even had some live music from Stephen Lewis and Pirate Soul at Wilser's Room.  Even through the pouring rain, volunteers helped pick up over 120 bags of garbage off of Fredericton's streets.  It was a fun day to say the least!

So back at my failed project.  I started to lose steam around May or June.  I was finding it increasingly difficult to always carry my garbage bag around with me.  Bringing a bag full of garbage is kind of gross to bring it to work, the mall, the bus, grocery stores, dentist offices, the hospital, etc... It's gross and a safety hazard to some.

I had to clean the bag every couple of days because sometimes I pick up some nasty half decomposed cups.  One time I picked up a cup that was stuffed full of snot rags.  Coincidentally the next day I was sick as a dog.

So those are the 2 excuses I'm going with, but runner up excuses are the following:

-  taking the time to clean the cups
-  uploading the pictures to flickr and tagging them
-  blogging about the project

So it's a new year, time for a resolution and mine is to revive this project.  I'm hoping to help put together another Earth Day event this year and will resume the project full steam.  I suppose this will sort of act as a relaunch to the project.  I'm hoping to involve schools and any other community that would like to help out.  In the meantime I will be blogging, tweeting and facebooking my friends that helped last year and will ask for some help.

Please stay tuned for 2013's version of #cleanupfred.