By JANIE STARR
Thanks to the perseverance of volunteer activist Ellen Kritzman, “Mug Shots” is back and here to stay. By lobbying Island coffee and tea purveyors to promote her cause, Ellen has almost single- handedly launched a community wide Bring-Your-Own-Mug campaign. Café Luna, The Hardware Store, Movie Magic, The Burton Coffee Stand, Vashon Tea Shop, Bob’s Bakery and Vashon Thrift-way’s Espresso Bar have all agreed to encourage customers to use their own mugs by offering a 10-cent rebate on every cup.
“A single paper cup and lid cost 19 cents, without the hot sleeve,” Ellen told me, over own-mug-tea the other day. A believer in win-win problem-solving, she came up with the 10-cent refund to help the pocketbooks of customers and business owners alike, one beverage at a time.
Furthermore, the environmental savings to the Island will be considerable.
Natalie Sheard of Café Luna fame has estimated that the café goes through 150 cups and lids per day for hot drinks alone. Additionally she runs 30 to 50 daily dishwasher loads, 65 percent of which are filled with cups and mugs. Now multiply that by all the drink spots on Vashon, and well, you can do the math — it’s a landfill-full.
While Ellen claims that her inspiration came from Sustainable Vashon’s Mug Shot Day, on Sept. 11, 2007, her commitment to recycling and reusing predates that event by a long shot.
As a founding member of the Audubon Society’s recycling committee back in 1990, Ellen collaborated with other members to launch paper recycling at the Vashon Post Office; the April special collections pick-up for scrap metal, tires and other hard-to-recycle items; the Adopt-A-Road clean-up program along Vashon Highway; a recycling program at the public schools; and cardboard recycling for Island businesses. Additionally, as a member of the Island’s Transfer Station Planning Committee, she was instrumental in setting up the recycling center we all use today.
Her only major disappointment was an inability to galvanize the community in a commitment to own-mug use and recycling at the Island’s annual Strawberry Festival. Now, through her indomitable spirit and dogged determination, she has worked successfully to accomplish both. In addition to getting coffee and tea shops on board, she, Hilary Emmer and Barbara Roberts, members of the Vashon Maury Island Community Council’s Sustainable Practices Committee, persuaded Lee Ockinga, executive director of the Vashon Chamber of Commerce, to inaugurate recycling at this year’s festival.
Large cans with lids will be scattered throughout the festival to collect those mounds of aluminum cans and plastic water bottles that have deluged the streets in years past. Ellen is counting on everyone to pitch in and, further, to consider the bold alternative of bringing their own reusable water bottles and forgoing the pop altogether.
When I asked Ellen what motivates her to keep whittling away at our Island’s waste, she responded that by establishing a standardized Island-wide strategy, she hopes to be the small drop that sends ripples through Vashon’s reduce-reuse-recycle pond.
For myself, carrying around my own mug reminds me of my other commitments to reducing global warming and generally making the Island a more sustainable place: growing veggies, shopping the farmers markets and roadside stands, buying locally, turning down my thermostat to glacial levels, walking more, driving less and on and on. The mug makes me do it! I’ve been told that this simple act spurs others to swim in that pond that Ellen has endeavored so hard to deepen.
Ellen and I would both like to encourage you to look for our catchy signs at participating shops and to enjoy a better tasting brew in your very own mug. After all Ellen’s tireless efforts, it’s the least we can do.
— Islander Janie Starr has been working on climate change issues on Vashon for the past
