The popularity of take-away hot drinks in public coffees and institutions, especially universities, has prompted Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) to organise the movement “Pay for drink, not for packaging”. This week, 21–27 November, everyone buying coffee in their own mug instead of a disposable container will get a 20 percent discount.
The discount is being applied in the FreshSpot cafes in the faculties of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (Studentų Street 50), Civil Engineering and Architecture (Studentų Street 48) and Chemical Technology (Radvilėnų Road 18).
“The student flow every day is huge: young people are attending lectures, studying together, creating group projects, which often make them stay late at the university. Take-away coffee and tea in these situations is a perfect way to relax, to rest and to prepare for the next task”, says Valdonė Daugėlaitė, PhD student at KTU Institute of Environmental Engineering.
40 million disposable cups’ waste accumulate in Lithuania per year, which, according to Daugėlaitė, are not being recycled. The only choice for responsible “green-thinking” consumers is to buy hot drinks using their own cups.
“Our movement “Pay for drink, not for packaging” is a response to the mass culture of disposable packaging in our society. Although coffee-to-go has become a symbol of contemporary society and the countless coffee places are delivering this service, consumers must think for themselves about the consequences of their actions to the planet”, says Daugėlaitė.
Inga Gurauskienė, the curator of the KTU Green University initiative encourages applying the 5-R principle to all our consuming: replace, reduce, refine, reuse, and rehabilitate. According to her, the largest waste is the waste of disposable packaging; by avoiding these packages we are moving one step closer towards sustainable consuming.
