Coffee Cup Creativity

The other day, I met with recruiters from a company that specializes in packaging solutions (in true consultant-esque anonymity) and we were talking about the various brands this company can boast of. There were a bunch of familiar names – I think I’ve spent way too many years of my life obsessing about the consumer packaged goods industry – and there were some interesting surprises.

The most interesting one, though, was that this company is famous for making cups for Starbucks! Of the eleventy million Starbucks coffees I’ve consumed in this lifetime, I never thought to look below the cup to see who actually made these cups… and of what. So it turns out that this company and its association with the Starbucks coffee cup is very famous in the sustainability circles because they actually use re-usable material in the manufacture of the paper for these cups. So for all the times that I might have felt bad about having “coffee for here” in a Styrofoam cup, the footprint was not as bad as I imagined… although not bad > not as bad, so technically I was still leaving a footprint…

So what’s even more interesting is this ubiquitous coffee cup can be the canvas for a brilliant bit of creativity. See what I mean here. Meanwhile, here's a (made of plastic) beer glass/cup from my first Cold Call at Darden.