Hello to all our readers! It’s already our last issue for the second semester of 2018. How is your semester until now? Are you so tired and exhausted to live without coffee? It is true that a lot of modern people drink at least one cup of coffee a day. In Korea, starting August 2018, using disposable plastic cups in cafes is banned in accordance with the Act of Recycling of Resources. This means, when the consumers are going to stay in the cafe after ordering, the cafe must offer their beverages in non-disposable cups such as mugs or glasses. The Korean Government is enforcing this law to slow down the injudicious usage of disposables.

Then, what about our school campus? Let us think about the cafes on KMU campus. There are some cafes where the boundary between inside and outside of the place is quite distinct and clear: cafes at Student Union building and Sung-gok Library. On the other hand, some cafes have unclear distinction between inside and outside: cafes at Bugak Hall, College of Engineering, College of Law, and College of Science. So, for both of those cafes and customers on our campus, the current law is quite vague to carry out. Plus, as students, who are the major consumers of the campus cafes, need to frequently move to other places with their beverages, they prefer to get them in plastic cups for convenience. Considering these factors, it seems quite hard to apply the current law of banning the usage of disposable plastic containers at cafes on our campus. Unless students carry their own cups or tumblers of their own, it seems like the usage of plastic cups on campus will not be decreased at a large proportion. However, you are going to soon find out or already have seen a novel campaign going around on our school campus. The ‘0(Young) Tumbler’ project is it! This project is currently going on at the cafe of College of Law. Let us meet the crews who are managing this project!

Hello, we are Yoon-Ji Lee(School of Russian Studies), Sun-Woong Park(School of Advanced Materials Engineering), and Tae-Gun Lee(Department of Korean History). Tae-Gun was the former director of KMU’s Tenspoon organization, and Sun-Woong and I are both currently working as managers of ‘Tenspoon(Sip Si Il Bap)’ and ‘Zero Tumbler’ project in Kookmin University. Firstly, ‘Tenspoon’ is a volunteer activity program, where student-volunteers do part-time jobs by working at school cafeterias and donate their entire pay to give meal tickets to other students in the same campus who have economic difficulties. Originally, ‘Tenspoon’ is an organization founded to solve ‘Youth Hungers’ problems in our society. And we started to widen our thinking in the field of helping youths by joining ‘0(Young) Tumbler’ project of SKT(*SKT is one of Korean the telecommunication companies).

Starting from the day ‘0 Tumbler’ project was launched on our campus and until now, it is being held at the College of Law cafe. When you order and purchase your beverage, please bring a 0 tumbler placed at the outside of the cafe, which is a black tumbler lent by this project. If you choose to get your beverage in the tumbler, you can get 200 won discount! Once you take the ordered beverage in the tumbler, it does not mean you can own the tumbler. You will find a bin for returning zero tumblers at the outside of cafe. When you are done with drinking, you have to return the tumbler into the bin. As the tumbler is a reusable container, our ‘0 Tumbler’ crews will pick up returned tumblers from the bin and wash them at the school cafeteria kitchen daily. After that, washed tumblers go back to the cafe again for drying process and wait for next customers. This is the whole process of how this project is being operated. So, through this project, the cafe can use lesser disposable plastic containers by offering beverages in tumblers.

Then why did you choose to become managers of ‘0 Tumbler’ project while doing ‘Tenspoon’ together?

People might not know well there are youth in our community who are in need of support. Even we, the students, who are studying and spending most of our days on campus, seldom aware that there are friends around you need help and attention. It might sound awkward that youth need to help other youth in the same generation. However, we think that we are the ones who understand better about their difficulties than people in any other generations. Not just solving the problem of ‘Youth Hungers’ with ‘Tenspoo n’, we thought we could also lighten their burden on mobile data charges and at the same time help the environment by activating the ‘0 Tumbler’ project. If the ‘0 Tumbler’ project is fully activated in our school after this semester, we are looking forward to making a platform to provide support on mobile data charges for the beneficiaries of Tenspoon. And this is one of the reasons why we, the managers of Tenspoon, joined hands with the ‘0 Tumbler’ project.

Also, we thought 0 Tumbler project is meaningful organization likewise Tenspoon that are trying to solve problems on campus by students' own hands. And as the process of volunteering and managing system of Tenspoon are quite similar to those of 0 Tumbler project, we could readily participate as crews of this project.

What is the expected benefit of this project?

For the most part, the environmental aspects. As you know, it is a worldwide problem that vast amounts of disposable plastic products are used by humans and it is causing the negative environmental impact. This is the first time for trying this project on school campus. However, we believe the ‘0 Tumbler’ project is going to be the first step for students and other consumers to think about current environmental problems and ongoing waste of disposable plastic cups. We hope people can apply this awareness not just on campus, but also in their daily life. Also, the 0 tumblers are made out of eco-friendly materials. We sincerely hope many KMU students make their choices to use 0 tumblers.

How did you select current crews of ‘0 Tumbler' project?

As this is not a paid part-time job, like Tenspoon does too, some students tend to think they can randomly make changes or become absent on the planned schedule of the project. Also, there might be participants who drop out in the midway of the project. To reduce and minimize these sorts of possible problems, we rated diligence and time availability of the applicants mostly. Surprisingly, a lot of applicants for this project are already eco-conscious. We were happy to select student-applicants who are interested in using tumblers. Hope all the crews go together until the end of this first project without any troubles!

Is there anything you want to say to 0 tumbler users?

Firstly, we would be very much glad to see students holding 0 tumblers on the campus. The project for this semester is held only for the College of Law cafe, but we hope this could be expanded to the whole campus of KMU in the next semester if possible. However, for successful participation in this project, we hope students keep in mind some simple rules! When returning 0 tumblers to the bin located in the College of Law building, please make sure that the tumbler is empty and there is no more beverage in it. Plus, 0 tumblers are not offered to you for your own possession. The 0 Tumbler project is lending tumblers to customers. So, we hope all the students and customers return 0 tumblers to the right place. The 0 Tumbler crews will do the rest of works for you to conveniently and constantly use 0 tumblers at the school cafe.

Lastly, we want to say ‘thank you’ to KMU COOP(Cooperative) and all the staffs in the school cafeteria for letting us launch this project with our school cafe and sharing their workplace with us. And hopefully, all the Kookmin Review subscribers to be a part of this project by using 0 tumblers until the end of this semester so that we could meet again on our entire campus in the next year!

Soo-Min Kim
The Kookmin Review  Editor-In-Chief
sera20834@kookmin.ac.kr