Introducing Teaism KeepCup Exchange

Friends,

We are excited to share with you this new program for a reusable cup exchange!

This message is directed especially to our most consistent, regular, and loyal customers:
We appreciate you and how so many of you care about your environmental impact! While we know that we are imperfect small-business operators, we have strived over the years to do right, model possibilities, and adapt our offerings accordingly.

The success or failure of this initiative depends on YOU.

How it works:

To reduce disposable cup waste, we will make available a pool of 16 oz reusable Teaism KeepCups for regular customers to buy into. You can bring that cup back to us anytime, to any Teaism location, dirty or clean. We will serve your drink in a fresh KeepCup. You will get a $0.40 discount on your subsequent drink purchases, every time you bring a reusable Teaism KeepCup cup back in.
This discount cannot be combined with other discounts.

Breakage, loss, funds:

To pilot this reusable cup exchange program, we are grateful to have received grant support from the DC Department of Energy and Environment and Chesapeake Bay Trust. We are still charging to cover the costs of the KeepCups to encourage consumer stewardship for the cups. Funds raised from the KeepCup exchange program will allow us to replace these cups over the long term and help us pay for other sustainability-related efforts such as composting at our restaurants.

We cannot be responsible for lost or broken Teaism KeepCups. If you lose or break yours, you will need to buy a new one.

If you buy a Teaism KeepCup one day but then don’t bring it in the next day, we cannot offer you the $0.40 discount – the point of the discount is to encourage consumers to get away from disposable cups and our Point of Sales system will be tracking the use of these cups with an eye towards usage metrics for the DC DOEE’s future programming. To that end, we also cannot currently offer the $0.40 discount for anyone who brings in any other type of reusable cup – as much as we are grateful for you doing the right thing!

What would my impact be?

In 2018, KeepCups conducted a Life Cycle Assessment of their products, showing that KeepCups have a lower environmental impact than single-use paper/polypropylene cups after 24 days of use (assuming one use per day). After 10 days (one use per day), all KeepCups have a lower impact than compostable cups.

KeepCup Care information can be found here