News Archive

Don't listen to anybody who tells you that coffee is bad for you.

Drinking coffee at UWA can benefit the world in three ways - and that's apart from making you feel good.

KeepCups - reusable coffee cups - were introduced onto the Crawley campus this year, to reduce the impact of the 270,000 take-away coffee cups sold each year.

Dan Stone, Guild Environmental Officer, said the number of coffees sold in disposable cups had dropped by three per cent within a few months of launching the KeepCups.

"We're hoping for a 10 per cent reduction by the end of the year," he said.

That means 27,000 fewer disposable cups in landfill. It also means fewer trees cut down to make cups: 27,000 cups are equivalent to four trees' worth of paper. The swing to KeepCups will also save 80kgs of plastic lids and 28 gigajoules of energy.

"That's enough energy to make 28,000 pots of coffee," Dan said.

The Guild's KeepCup campaign has won them an award that recognises innovation and excellence in recycling and waste reduction. The project was Highly Commended in the community category of the state's Infinity Awards.

Some similar sustainable coffee cups are given away free of charge and paid for with corporate advertising.  But Dan said the Guild had decided that students would value their KeepCups more if they paid for them, and ensure they brought them to campus every day.

They are for sale for $10 at all Guild catering outlets. You can also buy your KeepCups online in a limited edition of UWA colours, depicting the peacocks, James Oval and the boatshed ( www.sd.fm.uwa.edu.au ). Unbranded KeepCups are also available at the Co-op in a variety of sizes and prices.

"Students and staff can choose their cups' colour schemes to suit their personalities," Dan said. "They are so eye-catching that everybody notices them, which helps to create a culture of re-use on campus."

Trish Howard from Sustainable Development, which has worked on the KeepCup project with the Guild, said thousands of colour combinations were possible, so your cup can reflect your personality, as well as signal to everybody your sustainability credentials.

"The impacts of using a KeepCup (the carbon footprint of their life cycle) break even with disposable paper cups after just 15 uses," Trish said. "This takes into account cleaning them after use."

The cups are BPA-free, dishwasher and microwave safe, manufactured in Australia and recyclable at the end of their lives. "Most paper coffee cups are not recyclable due to their inner lining," Trish said.

(The other two benefits of drinking coffee on campus are environmental and social: all coffee from Guild outlets are certified organic and Fair Trade.)