Group Meeting #3

I apologize for the delay. These minutes are long overdue…

The meeting was on Wednesday, February 26th at 12pm. The meeting took place at a table on the first floor of the library. Rachelle, Angie, Anne, and Chelsea were in attendance at noon and David joined us later after trying to give blood. Thank you for trying to donate David, it's a large heart you have! :)

We had sweedish fish at the meeting…thank you Rachelle!

At the meeting we…

1. Identified the problem further.
• A large amount of landfill space is being taken up by hot drink cups and all their parts. The cup itself, the lid, and sleeves are all often thrown away. Rachelle found out that Peregrine Perks goes through 250-300 hot drink cups a day. 1/3 of this number is just coffee itself. 
• People don't break down their cups and throw the lid in the plastic recycle, the sleeve in the paper recycle, and the cup in the trash. 
• The cost of buying the cups and additional items has to be high. 
2. Discussed specifics on how to solve the problem.
• Use the medium cup size as the average.
• Find the cubic yards of waste that goes to the landfill due to the cups to persuade people that this is a problem.
• Also, we thought more people would be buying coffee this year because it's extremely cold out. This builds our case even more.
• We will calculate our numbers based off of 5 days a week and 15 weeks in the semester.
• We will include the C-store but not downstair's dining.
3. Talked about other thoughts.
• David found out that in the campus bookstore a mug is $6-$10, a metal thermos is $12-$15, and a plastic travel mug is $18 so we thought we could sell reusable mugs for the program in the bookstore as well.
• It would be a cost savings for Sodexo not buying all of these cups and we thought we could offer a discount of 10 cents to students if they are using a reusable mug to get their coffee in. 
• Our campus prides itself on the UC specifically being a "green" and environmentally friendly building so avoiding the use of so many disposable cups fits the buildings mission. 

For our next meeting on March 5…

1. Angie is going to check on the price of the cups.
2. Chelsea is going to ask the C-Store for the number of coffees they sell each day and the cost of their supplies.
3. Rachelle is going to try and calculate the cubic yards of landfill.
4. Everyone is going to take pictures of overflowing garbage cans with coffee cups in them.