Betacup Challenge Winners Announced

Betacup Challenge Winners Announced

Our regular readers will recall PSFK writing about the launch of the Betacup challenge. The competition, sponsored by Starbucks, was an effort to come up with solutions to reduce coffee paper cup consumption. Yesterday, Betacup announced the winning ideas that received cash prizes worth $20,000. We take a look at some of these innovative ideas.

Karma Cup: The winning idea of the Betacup challenge, conceptualized by Mira Holley, Nick Patridge, Gillian Langor, Mira Lynn, Zarla Ludin and Ruth Prentice, is not exactly an alternative cup but a promotional idea to encourage people to use reusable cups. Every customer with a reusable cup makes an X on a blackboard and every tenth person gets a free cup of coffee as an incentive to use reusable mugs. The idea also suggested adding washing stations for people to wash their own travel mugs and a system where Starbucks only serves coffee in reusable cups that it owns so customers can return the cup at their convenience at any Starbucks outlet.