Recent Williams grads partner with Mark Cuban to change frat parties forever.
In 2020, when the majority of college students were sent home from school due to the impending COVID-19 pandemic, Misha Medvedev and Peter Frelinghuysen were given time to think. These 20-something, Next Gen tennis players reflected on the carbon footprint of the prodigious amount of beer they consumed pre-pandemic at Williams College, a small liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Much of that carbon footprint is created not by the beer but by the ubiquitous red plastic disposable Solo cup that is a staple of every frat party and almost any element of American life that requires drinking outside your home.
Queue up Medvedev
“We were just sitting at home, and we thought back to, like, all the Solo cups we would use at Williams weekend after weekend, and realized how big of an issue it is. Williams is so small (the school’s population is just under 2000), and we were like, ‘holy shit, we use a lot of Solo cups!’ What’s going on at Michigan [University] or [University of] Wisconsin, right? Like, even bigger schools – it’s crazy.”
More than 7 billion red Solo cups are tossed into landfills every year.
Each year one company alone, Solo Cup Co., produces 7.4 billion of these cups that are used once and then tossed into landfills. On any given day, Solo produces 35 million plastic polystyrene cups and lids from its 51-acre plant in Urbana, Illinois. The production creates so much heat that a 300-ton air conditioner is required to keep the plant cooled.
Making frat parties climate-friendly
Medvedev and Frelinghuysen are living proof that there’s no need to look past your weekend plans to find a way to fight climate change. While at Williams, they realized that “going green” was rising in popularity on college campuses, so they figured: why not make beer cups biodegradable? The two avid tennis players decided to form a company, Earth Brands, to compete against the red cup Goliath.
After a year of research, they were able to make a disposable cup from corn resin, a natural and compostable material. The compostable cups proved to be an instant hit with hyper-aware students staring at the reality of a rapidly deteriorating climate. They claim to have sold 7.5 million cups and other plant-based products in little more than a year. They have also caught the attention of one of the world’s flashiest investors, Mark Cuban, with an unsolicited LinkedIn message. The CNBC Shark Tank host bit and, earlier this year, invested $1.7 million into the venture.
Peter Frelinghuysen and Misha Medvedev
Much of the company’s early success came from sticking to what they know best: partying. The company created a brand identity through word of mouth and social media (#stopSolo), where there is an abundance of content on their Instagram and TikTok (over 500,000 likes so far). Earth Brands seeks to make sustainability green, sexy and cool. It’s a marketing strategy that historically has worked for beer but rarely – make that never – for the cups in which it’s sold. While the montages of their brand events are remarkably white and reminiscent of high school lacrosse players’ highlight reels, perhaps there is something to be said for sticking to your own and baiting former jocks into a greener lifestyle.
The two founders are also banking on the viral power of word of mouth and experiential events as another way to market the cups.
The two founders are also banking on the viral power of word of mouth and experiential events as another way to market the cups. They have created the “Earth College Alliance,” an ambassador program at colleges across the country that gives students the opportunity to promote the cups at their school and on social media. Each ambassador is given a referral code, which allows them to make a commission on any sales made using their code. More than 2,500 students, or as they are known, “Earth Cuppers,” are currently participating in this program, making it an enormous marketing success. They are also into flashy events. In June, they hosted 600 revelers on a Manhattan rooftop, complete with a giant disco ball and branded Earth Cups.
Earth Cups have now expanded beyond colleges. They have formed partnerships with big names like Marriott, Princeton University, 818 Tequila (Kendall Jenner’s new tequila brand), as well as several coffee shops, breweries and restaurants predominantly in the northeast of the United States. In June, the Earth Cup was the official party cup for the 2022 Princeton reunion, which drew a jaw-dropping 40,000 well-heeled graduates from around the world. These cups replaced their green Earth Cup logo with Princeton orange and black.
But Medvedev is eyeing an even bigger prize: stadiums, where a green image can be placed directly into the hands of tens of thousands of fans.
Medvedev is quick to point out that beyond the flashy advertising and humorous TikTok presence, his green cups are not greenwashing. He explains that Solo cups are made from polystyrene, a cheap oil-based material that tends to end up in landfills. Earth Cups are made from corn- and sugar-based material that turns into soil in 90 days.
Climate & Capital sat down with Medvedev to hear how they are making this all work. Yes, the company did start in a garage a little over a year ago, where Medvevev was storing more than 100,000 cups in his parents’ Long Island house.
“My mother was not happy.”
“We can make this more eco-friendly product, brand it, sell it and educate students that our cups are better than Solo Cups, and eventually they are going to make an impact.”
Their call to action, says Medvedev, was: “We quickly learned that polystyrene is, like, a really toxic plastic and very cheap, oil-based, not recyclable. Over 8 billion end up in our landfills, right? Every year. So, huge issue.”
Indeed. “So we did research, we found this corn- and sugar-based material and made some cups out of them. And it kinda clicked. Right?”
To get going, the two entrepreneurs visited a nearby compost facility that they are now partnered with and tested the cups to see how biodegradable they were. “And they were like, yeah, send the cups our way, and we’ll take care of them, which is great – once they get composted, it turns to soil in 90 days.”
The environmental benefits are twofold, he says. “One is reducing the amount of Solo Cups we use and then replacing them with compostable cups.”
“We can make this more eco-friendly product, brand it, sell it and educate students that our cups are better than Solo Cups, and eventually they are going to make an impact.”
Through their marketing strategy and huge company parties, Earth Cups may have cracked the code on making climate action appealing to younger audiences. Instead of dwelling on climate doom, perhaps it’s time we celebrate sustainability.
