Know a club, society, or student volunteer who's made a difference? Nominate them ❤️ for an award.

This article is over 4 years old

We sold 24,000 drinks in reusable cups last year, that’s 5% of all hot drinks sold in Union cafés. It’s a good start, but together we can do better. Bringing and using a reusable cup helps reduce waste, save the environment and save you money – 15p on every hot drink in fact.

You’ll notice the new menus in our cafés now show two price lists – one price for a reusable cup and one for our standard price. We’ve upped the saving you’ll make from a reusable cup from 10p to 15p, and we’ve stocked our cafés with reusable cups on sale at a very reasonable £3.50, but you can bring any reusable cup along with you and do your bit to reduce waste.

Alongside this comes a review of our hot drink prices. Our standard size Tea (£1), Americano (£1.20), Filter Coffee (£1), Single Espresso (£1.10), and Single Macchiato (£1.20) have all stayed at the same price. With our standard size Flat White, Latte and Cappuccino increasing in price by 5p, from £1.35 to £1.40. That still makes us more than £1 cheaper than Starbucks and by far the best value coffee on campus. If you’re used to bringing a reusable cup to our cafés you’ll be saving more on lots of our most popular drinks, and paying the same price for a Latte as you always have. If you want to join our efforts to reduce waste and start bringing a reusable cup – then it's all savings from here.

Whilst the prices of most hot drinks have stayed the same or increased slightly, prices for hot drinks with lots of milk - Mocha’s, Chai’s, Hot Chocolates - have increased by 20p. This is due to the increasing cost of milk. We’ve been covering these cost increases for the past two years, but have had to reflect this in our prices this year.

The extra incentive to bring a reusable cup is just one part of our work to make our cafés, and the UCL campus, more sustainable. We’ve also swapped all plastic cutlery to biodegradable or wood, we only serve fair trade coffee, the packaging on our sandwiches and salads is made from recyclable or biodegradable material (even that little sandwich preview window), and we’re now a zero food waste operation – any food left unsold is taken to a local homeless shelter.

Our cafés are a little bit different from others on campus or on the Tottenham Court Road. We’re a London Living Wage employer, we only employ UCL students and any surplus made in our cafes is put back into funding the great things you do through the Union. Every time you visit our cafés and buy a cup of tea, money is going back into helping you do more at UCL.