Plastic Beers Mugs, a Look to Europe, and Terrible Cups

I was looking at all of the mugs, cups, and glasses in my cupboard again and realized that something like the mug I got at the last Oregon Brewers Fest might be a good starting point. Not a real looker, but lightweight, with a handle, not very stackable, but polypropylene (PP) construction. PP (plastic symbol #5) is widely used for food-grade plastic (no BPA). It withstands hot and cold liquids, but we'd have to see how it holds up against coffee/tea. Quite well I'd wager. I'll bring it to the cafe tomorrow. Here's a website with mugs similar to mine:
http://www.timberwolfplastics.com/stein-mugs.htm

Seems we could add male screw lid threads to top and different lids could be used. Would people carry lids around? Anyhow, add another set of threads to bottom (kinda dirty maybe) or side (branch-like growth) for screw-on lid storage?

This reminded me of reusable cup systems for events like football matches and music concerts in Europe I'd stumbled across when surfing the web before. In these systems you pay a deposit for your cup at the bar and bring it back for an exchange cup when you want a refill. If you want the cup as a souvenir, take it home, otherwise turn it in for a refund of your deposit. Do we have this at Blazers games and such now?

http://www.icupco.com/
Click on the environmental facts link to get this stat which I haven't fact checked: "North America consumes 50 million trees a year to make paper cups".
I'm guessing Forest Park has 1-2 million trees?

http://www.cup-service.net/cups-vending/plastic-cups-with-rim/

Most of these systems use a PP tumbler without a handle for ease of stacking. Many of the designs have a thicker portion at the top so they can be held comfortably when filled with hot beverages. One system says they get about 100 uses from each cup. Perhaps a more rugged design could get 3-5 times as many uses. Gotta figure out how many uses we NEED to get out of each mug.

If a stackable design like this could work (with screw lid top also or other lid affix point) it could easily replace the stack of paper cups currently sitting next to our airpot.

I'm thinking that the next step for our shop, is to stop buying "eco" compostable cups with "King Corn" PLA lining (we started with these cups when we did farmers markets only and could recapture a decent percentage of cups and send them to Cedar Grove via Portland Composting, but now most all of the cups go right into the landfill), replace them with commodity white paper cups with dinosaur lining, and put up a sign that says, "Ask Us About Our Terrible Cups". Guaranteed to break the ice at parties. The $30 per 1000 case we save on cups and the $20 per 1000 case we save on lids will give us some cashflow for the Portland Cup project. Yippee!