University of Victoria
IN-24: Innovation A

In 2010, UVic launched “Love-a-Mug-Week” which is a campaign designed to highlight reusable coffee cup use as a socially desirable behaviour. Until the fall of 2013 the campaign subsidized the sale of reusable mugs when a number of campus coffee outlet started offering inexpensive reusable cups at cost. That fall, the program shifted. Volunteers began distributing free coffee or tea vouchers to people carry reusable mugs. The university tracked coffee cup use before and after Love-a-Mug-Week in order to better understand the impact of the campaign on the use of reusable mugs. Unfortunately, the campaign had little impact as only marginal difference in coffee cup use was observed after the campaign. In an effort to improve the effectiveness of the Love-a-Mug-Week, the Office of Campus planning and Sustainability collaborated with the UVic Facilities Management Waste Reduction unit to create "Muggo" the reusable coffee cup mascot as a second program element. Muggo, travels around campus during “Love-a-Mug Week”, drawing significant attention from students, and raising the awareness of the campaign significantly. Muggo and the Green Team volunteers reiterate the Love-a-Mug message constantly as they travel around campus and provide a stronger social media presence for the campaign. Muggo’s impact was immediate. By tracking reusable vs disposable mug use before and after each semester’s Love-a-Mug week since September of 2014, UVic has observed an increase in reusable cup use from 22% to 34%. The changes are attributed to the deployment of the Mascot because no other changes were made to incentivize reusable cup use or disincentivize disposable cup use during the period in question.