Every morning in Kingston, thousands of paper coffee cups end up in trash cans after people are finished getting their daily caffeine fix. The convenience of those to-go cups is undeniable, but so, too, is the wastefulness of using a cup once and throwing it away.

But the student-run coffee shops at Queen’s University are hoping to lead the rest of the java joints in the city in moving away from paper cups by making it easier for customers to use reusable travel mugs instead.

On Wednesday, the Common Ground Coffee House, The Brew, and the Tea Room at the university will launch a reusable cup swap program. This will let customers bring in used plastic mugs and take their coffee away in a clean one.

According to the Common Ground’s head manager, Gretha Conrads, the group of students running the cafes this year wanted to do something that would improve the sustainability of their operations.

“We wanted to make sure we were doing more for the environment and to reduce our impact on campus,” Conrads explained. “Something we wanted to address was waste by making it as easy as possible for people to choose reusables and reduce their waste.

The cup-swap program is not the first attempt at promoting the use of travel mugs on campus. After realizing that Common Grounds alone produced 180,000 used coffee cups per year, catering manager Ellie Maclennan began spearheading efforts to cut down that number drastically.

Those efforts led to a giveaway of 1,000 plastic cups to Queen’s students in October. This initiative seemed to have the desired effect, but only for a few weeks.

“There was a brief spike in the number of reusable mugs being used, but it decreased pretty quickly,” Conrads said. “What we thought might be happening there was that it’s a lot of work to keep you reusable cup clean and to remember to take it every day.”

After searching for a solution to this problem, they found a cup-swap program being run by HuskeeCup, a manufacturer of reusable travel mugs. After investigating the idea with the Queen’s Backing Action on Climate Change club, they decided to roll it out as a campuswide initiative.

Starting on Wednesday, anyone who buys one of the travel mugs from any of the campus cafes will be able to take the cup to any coffee shop in the world that participates in HuskeeCup’s program, turn in a dirty mug and get a clean one.

The cafes do the hard work of cleaning and redistributing the cups, while customers can feel good about significantly cutting down on the amount of waste produced by their caffeine habit.

The student cafes are hoping the initiative will be enough of a success that it will convince other coffee shops in Kingston to join the program as well, vastly increasing the number of places where people can use the cups. Conrads said it makes good business sense for other establishments to join.

“Not only is it a great way for customers to reduce their waste, but it’s also a great way for smaller coffee shops and other businesses across Kingston to be put on the map and encourage students to come,” she said.

The cafes will be selling the reusable cups for a discounted price of $22.50 until Feb. 14. Queen’s Backing Action on Climate Change will also be giving out 100 cups for free to those willing to help promote the initiative.

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