The Starbucks Karma Cup

I have railed on Starbucks (and all the other coffee stores) in that past over all of the wasted paper coffee cups, but after a long time coming, the company has joined with the Betacup program and decided to make some improvements. The Betacup program initially asked for sugestions from customers on how to fight the coffee cup waste. Here is a video explaining the problem and how to find the solution.
Now the winning idea has been chosen, and it is a brilliant one.  Instead of redesigning the reusable coffee mug, the solution was simply to give folks an incentive to remember their mug.  Every coffee addict that I know has multiple reusable mugs, but I don’t often see them being used.  Reusable mugs are hard to clean and easy to forget, so to help people remember, the Karma cup idea will reward every tenth customer bringing a reusable mug with a free cup of coffee. This is so much smarter than a punch card, or a discount, because you never know when you are going to be a winner, so you always have to be on your toes and bring your  mug.  The only addition that I would make would be mug cleaning station.  How many times have you had a reusable mug, wanted to use it, but just couldn’t stomach drinking out of the same cup for another day without washing it?  So now, what if Starbucks had a quick wash station so that while you were waiting in line, you could wash out and sanitize your mug?  Now that would be convenient, and with the addition of the Karma cup idea, could change some attitudes about coffee.

More information on Betacup and the coffee cup problem

-Betacup: Check out these other great solutions

-Treehugger

-Coffee Waste Calculator

-Sustainability is Sexy