The idea of reusable cups is not new. They were in circulation at the Virus festival that used to be held on the TU/e campus (until 2007), and at Japie's Gouden Loper Festival similar beakers were recently in use, tells Josien de Koning of the GO Green Office at TU/e. Nonetheless, according to her colleague Emanuel Vallarella, this is an area in which the Netherlands “needs to catch up. Reusable beakers and bringing along your own beaker are much more common abroad”.

The power of the Festival Cups project, believes the Italian student, is due in no small measure to the simplicity of the concept, “with which, for a start, we can prevent a whole lot of refuse and you as an individual student get the chance to do your bit in a way that's really easy.”

TU/e design

Including printing, the new TU/e beakers (five thousand of them, based on a design by TU/e student Ties Beekman) cost about 75 cents per beaker. This is being paid for out of the regular budget of the GO Green Office; the office isn't getting any special funding. The Festival Cups will get their baptism by fire at the Plugged Festival on Thursday 7 June. Visitors pay a token worth one refreshment serving (1.50 euro) for their beaker; at the end of the event they get that amount back in cash when they hand in the beaker.

The GO Green Office isn't excluding the possibility of some visitors wanting to take their beaker home with them as a souvenir - as often happened until more than decade ago with the printed beakers at the Virus festival: “If they then bring the beaker back to the next festival, that would be great.”

Because, as Vallarella explains, it costs more energy to produce a (thicker) sustainable beaker than a disposable beaker. According to him, the reusable cups must be used fifteen to twenty-five times (in other words: for fifteen to twenty-five servings) before they are worthwhile from a sustainable perspective.

Intro

The GO Green Office is in preliminary talks with, among others, the organizers of the academic year party MomenTUm and with the Central Introduction Committee. Vallarella: “This year two Introduction Weeks are being held, for the Bachelor's and for the Master's. These are great opportunities to save on a huge amount of plastic refuse.”