The Betacup contest has come to an end with 430 entries! Yesterday, the jury selected winners were announced, and first place went to the Karma Cup! Karma Cup transforms buying your daily coffee into a game that can only be played by those with reusable cups. Every person who uses their own mug puts a mark on the chalkboard and every 10th person get’s their drink for free! This is a great idea and I really hope Starbuck’s implements it. This process of engagement is far more rewarding than a $0.10 discount.
However, Starbucks has recently launched a fun new campaign to promote VIA, their instant coffee. The new website allows you to virtually and physically (through the use of a coupon) share a customized mug of VIA with a friend. While I’m no fan of instant coffee, I did review VIA last December and sadly, it’s better than Starbucks drip coffee. But all of my coffee snobbery aside, I do appreciate the design and—to a certain extent—the marketing behind the company. Starbucks has a solid in-house design group in Seattle and they consistently turn out high quality packaging, collateral, and emotion driven campaigns.
This new campaign does just that, while utilizing social media, customization, and mugs—which I love—and something many coffee drinkers have an intimate connection with. Now, if only Starbucks would start using them again in all of their stores, we could begin to stop wasting billions of paper cups each year (atleast they’re trying!).
Last December we wrote about the Beta Cup challenge (still trying to raise money at that point), but since then, Starbucks has stepped in and offered to sponsor the competition. According to Core77, the contests media sponsor, there have been over 152 entries to rethink the current system for coffee to-go. You can view and rate the entries so var on Jovoto. There are a lot of great ideas floating around and it will great to see how quickly the winning solution can be implemented. Good luck to all the participants.
Save the Cups is a new campaign targeting the wasteful use of disposable cups. Any effort targeting this problem gets my attention and this one uses the power of social media, driven by the narcissism of self-congratulation, to create some good spirited competition. Once you log in, you can give yourself a pat on the back each time you reuse a cup rather than a disposable one, adding to the overall count of cups saved this year.
I haven’t figured out how to add my own cafes and the design, while nice, leans a little too far on the cute side. But I’m curious to see how the team at Save the Cups will grow and reach out to its community of users. Will there be awards for each month’s highest saver? The current design is based on the honor system, so it may be hard to regulate how many cups a person really saves, but it would be a nice incentive if they can figure out the technicalities.
This, like BetaCup, is another attempt to get people to voluntarily change their behavior without any incentive to break the habit of convenience. While noble in its attempt, I still blame cafes for not trying hard enough to persuade their customers to forgo disposable cups. It would be much more admirable if the cafe’s self-regulated rather than waiting for the day that the government enevitably does it for them (à la plastic shopping bags). By either charging more for a paper cup, giving more than a measly 10 cent discount for bringing your own, or saying, “if you want your coffee to-go, bring your own mug.”
In North America we consume 58 billion paper cups every year. This represents 60% of the worlds total cup wastage. Shockingly these cups are not being recycled and most end up in landfill. The problem is that as consumers we love convenience, and paper cups have become a symbol of how out of control our throw away culture has become. Adding to the problem is the fact that adoption of current, reusable alternatives is less than 2%, due in part to the fact that these alternatives are not as convenient as the paper cup. This means we have a serious problem on our hands.
That’s where the betacup comes in. Our goal is to eliminate paper cup consumption and create a more convenient alternative through a global collaborative design contest. The aim will be to invite designers and design teams all around the world to come together around this shared problem.
I believe design can solve a lot of problems, but sometimes the problem isn’t poor design, it’s people. While I strongly agree with the motivation behind this project, I don’t believe poorly designed travel mugs are the reason people don’t use them. “I am not a Paper Cup” (pictured below), for example, looks just like the cups we leave a cafe with, but most people won’t be bothered carrying an empty one with them to the store. It’s not because the cup is bulky or hard to clean, it’s because people are lazy and convenience is greater than reducing their impact on the environment. However, the Beta Cup Prize hopes to change this.
There is already an unlimited supply of manufactured ceramic and plastic mugs floating around thrift stores and Wal-Marts. To think about designing and producing even more stuff is not only irresponsible, but it’s not the solution. You have to change peoples behaviors—and this time—I don’t think a fancy new cup is the answer. Most Starbucks have stopped using ceramic mugs, so if I’m not getting my coffee to go, I’m stuck with a paper cup unless I’ve brought my own. While this makes the problem worse, it’s also inspired my solution.
Here’s my idea for Beta Cup. Get cafe’s to stop providing cups altogether. If you want your coffee, you provide the vessel. It doesn’t matter what shape, color, size, or material. You may loose some customers in the beginning, but at some point it will click, habits will form, people will change and if they really love their coffee they will bring their own cup. Give me $20k and I will use it to develop an awareness campaign and a countdown clock, to give customers forewarning. On zero day, all cups vanish from stores, peoples mindsets are reset, and new behaviors begin to take shape.
