Less than one day's worth of the coffee cups used on campus!

The Reusability Team invites you to be a part of a change on campus!

Approximately 3,000 disposable coffee cups are thrown in the garbage everyday on campus. As this is a major source of garbage on campus, reducing this number by increasing mug use could have a significant impact on reducing the amount of waste produced at Western.

We need you to help make a change! The Reusability Team will be working towards changing the patterns of students when it comes to disposable coffee cups, plastic water bottles, as well as plastic bags.

Don’t forget: by using a reusable coffee mug, you get a discount at any on campus coffee location! Not to mention your coffee stays warm and you’re helping out the environment. It’s up to you to make a difference!

Project Leader: Elaine Decleir

Reusability Team was EnviroWestern’s first project team. It was started after a building waste audit revealed that disposable coffee cups contributed over 6% of the weight of our waste—a proportion that the team was confident they could decrease. After all, the University of Waterloo’s Lug-a-Mug campaign had reduced their cup waste by nearly 90% over a 10 year period. Late the Spring of 2004, the team decided to focus its activities on a single project and the ReusabilityTeam was created. At first, EnviroWestern sold only Tim Horton’s mugs with the support of the Hospitality Services staff, who already had the mugs on hand at their Tim Horton’s outlets. After successful sales at the end of the 2003-2004 school year, the club brought the project to the next level. They raised nearly $4,000 from departments at Western to purchase their own mugs. The new EnviroWestern mugs were very well received and awareness of the reusable mug discount and the cup waste issue increased dramatically. A successful project team was born!