Only one per cent of staff and students have taken up a cross campus money saving scheme introduced to KU this year, university caterers revealed this week.

The campaign launched by Avenance, the university’s main catering company, sees five pence taken off the price of a hot drink when a buyer brings in their own mug for the purchase. Originally trialled at the Kingston Hill campus, the scheme was extended to the Picton Room at Penrhyn Road to measure the level of response from students in March.

However, Avenance operations manager, Katherine Yardley-Turpin, has revealed that the scheme is not having the impact the catering company was hoping for, despite an effort to advertise. She said: “At present the scheme has not had much take up at all, less than 1% to be precise.” 

A survey of 34 Picton Room users revealed only four were aware that there was a money saving scheme in place. One of them was Khalid Ali, a first year studying statistics and strategy innovation. He mentioned that although he had heard of the campaign, he not seen anything detailing money that would be saved: “It depends on the discount,” he said, “My bag is always full so there isn’t enough room for a mug. But if the saving was worth it, I would bring in my own mug as I love my coffees and cappuccinos.”

Tori Haggins, speaking on behalf of the People and Planet society, believes the campaign is “a wonderful idea,” but expressed concern as to how the scheme would manage: “I am unsure how successful it could really be as from my experience people who stop at coffee shops and order to take away, do so impulsively - and so would not have planned in advance to bring their own mug.”

A plan has now been drawn up to expand the scheme further in collaboration with the university’s sustainability team: “We have suggested a few initiatives that need to be introduced, e.g. sale of a covered insulated cup to avoid health and safety issues,” said Ms Yardley-Turpin, which will be followed through as “part of the bigger sustainability picture.”

If you are interested in joining Kingston’s sustainability campaign now, you can purchase a re-usable ‘I am not a paper cup’ coffee mug from ebay.co.uk or nigelsecostore.com.