The Starbucks “12 days of gifting” feature a discounted or promotional offering December 1st through December 12th.  Tomorrow is the 12th, and it is by far the best of the “12 days” promotion.  If you are a coffee lover, you will love this.  Starbucks is offering a unique tumbler that comes with the benefit of free coffee refills during the month of January next year.  The tumbler will be $19.95, and then in January you bring it back to Starbucks and you can fill it with whatever brewed coffee happens to be offered.  It’s not clear to me exactly which coffees will be brewed next month, so I imagine you may be offered Pike Place Roast, a blonde coffee option such as Veranda or Willow blend, or possibly a bold coffee like Verona, if it is available.  The catch is that you cannot get a free Clover brewed cup of coffee in the tumbler, nor can you get a free pour over in the tumbler.

I really like this idea!  I know a number of Seattle stores that offer bold coffee close to all day, and I’d fill it with blonde-roast coffee too.  Okay, I’ve even been known to drink a cup of Pike Place Roast in a pinch.

There are limited supplies of the tumbler, so get to Starbucks first thing on Monday morning to get the tumbler!  I can’t wait.

There is one more aspect to this promotion that is important:  It is good for the environment to use your own cup, mug, or tumbler.  “Reducing consumption” is the way to prevent our landfills from filling up with paper cups.  Recycling paper cups is only a half-truth that it is a “green” thing to do.  Not all containers labeled “recycling” actually end up being recycled.  A small percentage will be unusable because too much contamination by oily foods, or mixed in non-recyclables.  Even when a cup is recycled, the overall energy required is very large: Recyclables must be cleaned, sorted, trucked to a recycling plant, re-manufactured into something new, and then re-distributed into the stream of commerce, very often via more big trucks on the road.  The small amount of effort to wash a tumbler is negligible compared to the energy outgo of manufacturing something anew from a paper cup.

It has been well over a year since I have talked about re-usable tumblers and their importance for the environment.  Here’s an old blog article from early 2010 on this topic:

2009 Shared Planet Update on Reusable Tumblers at Starbucks.

How did everyone like the other 12 days of Christmas promotion items?  This is a great promotion.  Get your tumbler, and make it habit to use it all the time. 🙂