Our recent Cup-for Life Initiative which replaced the Difference is a Dollar BYO discount scheme for hot and cold drinks sold on campus has already had a massive impact.
By deciding to use our own cups and mugs we have saved about 50,000 disposable paper and bio-plastic cups from our waste bins at Dover and East in just the first few months of this term. That's nearly half a tonne in weight!
Read more below about how UWCSEA took this step. Thanks to our Operations Department, Sodexo and student campaign groups for making this happen!
Towards Zero-Waste - the evolution of the Cup-for Life
Scheme
With Sustainability in its
guiding Mission, UWCSEA has been ramping up its efforts to develop a zero-waste
culture, with our student groups working closely with our Operations Department
and food services provider, Sodexo to change systems and behaviours on our
campuses. Our partnership with thought-leaders in the Circular Economy
movement, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, has given us even more impetus
to use our systems on campus as educational opportunities too. In the words of
our UWC movement’s strategy, we want to “Teach the right thing; do the
right thing”.
We have a long, long way to go to meet
this ambition but the big success this term has been the new Cup-for-Life
scheme that has replaced the use of disposable cups on our campuses. Despite
previous experiments with very generous discounts and express lanes for
customers bringing their own cups and having also already switched to biodegradable
(PLA) bioplastics and waxed paper cups in our cafes, serious waste challenges still remained. In very busy environments such as UWCSEA with multiple events on any
given day and a growing worldwide culture of having drinks “to-go,” the demand
for convenient take-away services meant that our use of disposable cups for hot
and cold drinks had risen to over 1200 per day across the two campuses.
With incineration as the destination for all non-recyclable waste in Singapore,
it meant that even this biodegradable material ended up in the atmosphere
rather than harmlessly in the Earth.
Working with Sodexo and our suppliers we
had put a detailed two-year investigation into investing in a commercial
biodigester to enable technical composting of our disposable cups but financial
and logistical challenges meant this was unlikely to be feasible for us. While
the idea of producing much needed compost from our waste was a highly
attractive idea (we already have success with composting huge amounts of our
kitchen waste), we decided instead to adopt another Circular Economy strategy
and design waste out of the system, rather than try to manage it as an
output. Student groups had already shown at large events that cup deposit
systems could work with correct pricing and enough manpower. Could this success
be scaled up for everyday use across 2 large campuses? Catering for several
thousand every day, all day, was much more of a challenge than serving just
hundreds over a few hours. Fortunately our Operations Departments and Sodexo
were just as ambitious as our student environmental campaigners and worked hard
over the summer break on a bold plan.
First
a supplier of re-usable cups had to be found - ideally with materials that
demonstrated environmental credibility too. Our current choice uses a mix of
plant-based and recycled plastics and while it's not going to win any aesthetic
design awards is at a price point low enough to encourage widespread adoption.
Secondly as we decided to start the new academic year with a sudden switch from
disposables we invested a lot of time into publicising the initiative and
followed this up with promotion at the campus cafes. Customers could buy a
Cup-for-Life and exchange at anytime for a clean one or a 50% refund.
Importantly, all drinks prices were now dropped to the discounted level
under our previous Difference is a Dollar Scheme that encouraged BYO
cups. This offset understandable fears at the cafes that there would be a loss
of sales and irate customers. The community response has been very positive so
far. With over 1000 sold in this first 8 weeks and many more customers now
adopting a BYO habit it seems that this system experiment is working. As
expected from some of the more senior staff who remember bottle deposit schemes
from their childhood there is even a flourishing informal economy amongst
younger students collecting abandoned cups for their trade-in value. There is
probably no better way to learn that there can be value in waste!
There are still some issues to be worked
out of course. There are indications that some are
slow to adopt the BYO habit and maybe switching to carton drinks available in
our canteens. While many cartons do get recycled by our student groups, the
majority end up in the normal incineration waste stream. Consequently targeting
replacements for these is one of our next zero-waste challenges while still
ensuring healthy choices for our students and commercial viability for our
partners Sodexo. However we are seeing too a growth in our community now taking
time to enjoy drinks in proper ceramic cups in the cafes. This combined with
the Cup-for Life scheme and a more fashion-conscious BYO culture amongst our
older students means that in just a few months since August we have prevented a
staggering 50,000 PLA and paper cups from being diverted to incineration. Like
Singapore, we’ve a long way to go on a journey towards Zero-Waste but this
major breakthrough is a result of a strong partnership between UWCSEA student
groups, our Operations Department and Sodexo and means that we are confident of
continuing our success in years to come.
Teachers: For a more detailed rationale to use with classes and service
groups as a great example of partnerships for Sustainable Development and
Circular Economy principles in practice please see this document.
The Reusable Party Packs can be used whenever the children are sharing food at school: end of term parties, birthday celebrations, bake sales etc. They are also available for parents and staff to borrow over the weekends and in the holidays. Our aim is to avoid buying single-use, disposable party containers, so please do let your child's teacher know if you would like to borrow the class set! 
The Reusable Party Packs can be used whenever the children are sharing food at school: end of term parties, birthday celebrations, bake sales etc. They are also available for parents and staff to borrow over the weekends and in the holidays. Our aim is to avoid buying single-use, disposable party containers, so please do let your child's teacher know if you would like to borrow the class set! 
