The other evening we were chatting with a friend from Hebrew Union College, which is located in the heart of Jerusalem’s city center.

She told us that the HUC students have taken the initiative to stop using disposable coffee cups and cutlery, in an effort to make their daily meals and beverages more eco-friendly.

Now each student brings her own mug and cutlery to school every day. Instead of throwing away hundreds of cups and plastic cutlery pieces, the students take time out of their busy study hours to wash everything at the end of the day.

“We all got free coffee cups from IsraStar, the cellphone plan that the school put us on,” our friend explained. “We decided that it would be much better for the environment if we use them instead of going through so many coffee cups each day.”

Since students are probably the world’s biggest experts on the capacity of the human body to consume gallons of caffeine, we’re guessing that those were a lot of cups being thrown away before. Good move, HUC!