Global warming had blurred the seasons until January cold spells cropped up in the middle of March and cherry blossoms made headlines with premature blooming schedules, but that day was all April - a healthy dose of fine dust, balmy weather, and a lengthy queue at the school cafe. I ordered an iced tea and waited at the dispensing counter for the familiar plastic cup, lid, and black straw. Instead, the barista handed me a paper cup that looked a bit like a truncated hoof with a lemon green band.

“It’s the Eco Committee’s new project,” she explained, pointing at an A4 sheet they had blue-tacked onto the wall. ‘Butterfly Cup’, the sheet read in bold Arial, and in the middle of the poster was a picture of the peculiar paper creation that I was drinking out of.

That was my first encounter with the Butterfly Cups - peculiar paper containers that at first looked more appropriate for the holding of french fries rather than coffee and tea. At its peak, our school cafe was selling approximately 200 drinks each day, which translated to roughly that amount of cups, lids and straws to wash and clean for the workers after closing - not to mention the sheer number of people who took liberties with where they threw away the containers. If the cups somehow made their way back to the trolleys in the cafe, great! If they were found causing leakages in the school bathroom because someone had thrown the whole schtick, lid and all, into the toilet and never looked back, not so great! The student council banded together to solve the problem, mostly because the school was threatening to close the cafe if the waste problem continued unchecked, and the Eco Committee was delegated. They returned with an appealing solution: why not run a beta program of butterfly cups at the cafe, and see if they made a dent in the issue?

Butterfly cups replaced plastic cups at the cafe for two weeks. The cafe didn’t need to provide any more lids, because the flaps at the top of the cup could be folded into the trademark hoof-shape. At the beginning of the project, there were intermittent complaints that paper cups were weaker and less convenient than plastic ones, but the arguments were quickly rebuffed. Weaker? The cups were made out of thick paper, thicker than the paper holders that students used to hold their Starbucks cups. Less convenient? How? The cup functioned as lid, carrier, and convenient disposal all at once - it was completely biodegradable, after all, and therefore no hassle at all to throw away. 

Butterfly cups became one of the Eco Committee’s biggest successes of the year. Pretty soon, the cafe extended its working hours because the workers could cut back on cleanup time that previously went towards scrubbing the plastic cups and binning them. It was a small change that caused a butterfly effect (entendre unintended, but necessary): the cleaners were happy there were less overflowing toilets to fix, management was happy the littering problem had diminished, students were happy the cafe hadn’t been closed down, and I was happy because I no longer had to suffer acute attacks of conscience each time I forgot to bring my tumbler to the school and walked out with a plastic cup in hand.

The butterfly cup is available at https://butterflycup.com/, and like our school, bulk-buying is entirely possible. If any other students out there know of establishments that would benefit from the usage of reusable paper cups, try looking into butterfly cups as an alternative. It works much better than the traditional paper cup, and eliminates straws and lids entirely. Keep us updated with anecdotes about real-life small successes!