The life cycle of the coffee cup [infographics]

This post is a little bit off topic but it's about something I had fun designing and a story we can probably all relate to. We have a couple of coffee machines at work and used to have disposable cups that people would throw away after drinking their coffee. A little while ago, we became a little bit more eco-friendly and replaced the disposable cups with real cups that we could reuse. We even have a dishwasher so that people don't need to wash their cups if they don't want to.

But what we find is that people are just lazy, messy and disrespectful of their colleagues and their worplace: we continuously find dirty cups in the sink, clean dishwashers that nobody wants to empty or dirty dishwashers that nobody takes time to start. We tried displaying a couple of signs in the kitchen, sending a message in the staff newsletter, to no avail, no change happened. We then started brainstorming on how to make it change and thought that a bit of humor might work, so we came up with the idea of designing a flowchart showing people what to do after they drank their coffee.

Here is the flowchart, illustrated in the shape of an infographic: The Life Cycle of the Coffee Cup.

If this story is familiar to you (it might even be the same in your own house), feel free to use it, or share it!