Occidental College
Campus Conversations
Weird Mugs Everywhere
The Green Bean Coffee Lounge, our student-run coffee shop on campus, strives to implement eco-friendly practices and promote sustainability in general. For example, we only sell organic, fair-trade coffee and all of our cups, lids, plates and utensils are compostable. But even though our cups are compostable, using less of them is still preferable. So on top of the 20-cent discount we give students who bring in their own travel mug when they purchase drinks, we have recently launched an in-house ceramic mug program. We've asked faculty and staff to donate any mugs they have lying around so that we can bring them back into circulation, don't have to purchase new ones and best of all have a wacky collection of random ceramic mugs around the Green Bean. If students order a drink and plan to stay there for a while, our baristas will suggest that they agree to have their drink served in a ceramic mug - saving one disposable cup at a time. We have yet to see if this program will be well received by our customers as we are only launching the pilot program during Finals week. We are hoping that students are inspired and decide to donate more mugs that they bring from home after Winter Break. And better yet, that they continue to think about ways to be less wasteful in their everyday routines. The really cool aspect of this whole thing is that because the Green Bean is student-run, we can try things like this almost any time we want. We were even able to hire a sustainability consultant from Sustain L.A. to evaluate our practices this semester and the school newspaper was kind enough to provide coverage of our progress. Below are some pictures of some of the mugs already donated: [gallery columns="2"]