Colorado’s athletics department is about to make a lot of people mad for reasons they can’t adequately explain.
CU announced Tuesday that, beginning on Saturday, it will replace plastic drinking cups with Ball Corporation’s “infinitely recyclable aluminum cup,” starting with this Saturday’s game against No. 25 Nebraska.
Colorado says it will be the first athletics department in the country to provide aluminum cups to fans and says it will be plastic-free in all sports venues by 2020.
“As an Athletic Department and university, we are proud of all we have done thus far and will continue to do in reducing our carbon footprint,” Colorado AD Rick George said in a statement. “We are thrilled to partner with Ball on this important project. Being conscious of the environment is not only the right thing to do, it sets an example for our fans and everyone else watching that they should make sustainable choices, too.”
Colorado became the first college sports program in America to implement a “zero waste program” at all sports venues, doing so back in 2008, and in 2016 was the only college athletics department to join the United Nation Sports for Climate Action Framework.
According to Ball’s research, which was most certainly used as part of the corporation’s sales pitch to CU, “67 percent of U.S. consumers say they will visit a venue more often if they use aluminum cups instead of plastic and that 78 percent of consumers expect beverage brands to use environmentally friendly containers in the next five years.”
I’m not sure how that can possibly be true, but the university’s release noted that 75 percent of all aluminum ever produced is still in use today and, equally important, the aluminum cups look pretty darn cool.