Campus groups get involved with Green Mugs project

Winter is coming, and Aggies are gathering supplies to survive the coming cold front. One of the new trends for this winter are reusable green mugs, which are the latest addition to the Blue Goes Green program at Utah State University.

In addition to creating the water stations, Aggie Blue Bikes and Housing Water Wars, USU’s Blue Goes Green project is currently giving out these mugs to students for free.

“I love that we have these new mugs. They’re eco-friendly and Utah is not normally eco-friendly,” said Haley Crews, an employee at the Artist’s Block and an exercise science major at USU.

The project went into action on Sept. 14 as green mugs were given to all cafes on campus in hopes that students would sign the pledge and start using the mugs to make USU sustainable.

“The Blue Goes Green mugs were a project started by Darren, then I created the designed for them,” said Marco Bodin, a senior at USU. “The point of them is to get students to ditch the paper cups and reduce solid waste at USU.”

These mugs do more for students then just get them involved in decreasing waste.

“If you buy the mug — which only costs one dollar if you don’t want to sign the pledge — and use it, I guarantee it will pay for itself within the week,” said Darren Bingham, creator of the green mugs project. “If you use one of our mugs just to refill a drip coffee, you don’t have to wait in line, and also you’re saving about twenty to fifty cents per drink.”

This could make a difference for students who plan on drinking coffee or any other hot drink this winter.

Bingham and Bodin weren’t the only collaborators on this project, though.

“We worked closely with dining services, which really helped us,” Bodin said. “They actually matched funding with us to get the mugs out.”

In addition to helping hand out the mugs and fund them, USU Dining Services has also agreed that for every throw-away mug students replace with a reusable mug, they will donate that six cents they’ve saved back to Blue goes Green funds.

There are currently 1,700 mugs in circulation at USU, which both Bodin and Bingham are hoping will get students to start becoming part of the solution.

“We aren’t asking students to go out and save the world themselves. All we want is for them to be part of the solution, not the problem,” Bingham said. “If we can get students to use these mugs, they can seriously help reduce the amount of solid waste at the university, which — right now — is a lot.”

If students are interested in getting a mug they can go any cafe on campus, sign a pledge or pay one dollar and start becoming #PartoftheSolution.

— shaniehoward214@gmail.com