My thoughts have been on the environment a lot lately. All the styrofoam and paper/plastic we use and then throw away was beginning to bother me.  Also as a (kind of) funny side note, a running mystery/joke in our church council is how on earth we end up going through so many cups in a month, keeping the size of our church in mind.  It's just a crazy added expense.
 
As a result we got the idea to buy smaller sized coffee mugs, and then have the kids decorate them as they wished.  Each student had his or her own cup.  They will use these cups throughout the time that they are in our youth ministry program, and then take them with them when they graduate.  
 
There's a lady in our church who has amazing amounts of craft supplies, so she lent us all of her non-toxic paints and brushes.  She instructed me to seal the cups afterward, with a non-toxic sealant.  We plan to decorate some mugs for visitors that come, with messages like "welcome to our youth group", "Jesus loves you", etc.  As kids become regular attenders of our ministry programs, they will make their own cups.  
 
We started this project one Sunday and plan to have the separate Bible study groups (which in part target different kids than the ones we see in Sunday School) and the kids from the Hispanic church makes cups at a time that works for them as well.  We plan to house the cups in our CE building, which all of those groups use at one time or another.

I'm excited about this "cups project" for a number of reasons:

1) As already noted, I think its bettter for the environment in the long run.

2) Although a bigger outlay of cash at first (about $3-$3.50 per cup), when you figure a kid can be in the youth ministry for up to 6 years, that is a whole lot of money saved on disposable cups!  

3) Saves money in the church budget.

4) Serves as an identity piece/community identifier for the ministry.

5) Helps kids remember their youth group experience when they go off to post-high school life.  

6) It's Sort of a "Rite of Passage" activity. We invite the incoming 7th graders to activities the summer before school starts, and this would be a fun "welcome to the youth group/make your cup" sort of activity.  

7) One of the kids suggested people be allowed each year to "tweak" something on their cup, if they feel like they're changing.  How great an idea is that!  In that way, it's like their cup is a visual mural of their teenage youth group experience.

Story provided by Stacey Greely