Overview Earth Cups Alliance puts a brand's logo and QR code on the compostable party cups that college students order for their own events, through an Earth Cups ambassador network that signed up more than 5,000 students across 400-plus campuses in its first year. The cups are Earth Brands' plant-based Earth Cups, BPI-certified to break down in about 90 days at an industrial composting facility. Co-branded designs move through the same channel as every other Earth Cup: student ambassadors, fraternities and sororities, student organizations, college bars and campus dining. Earth Brands was started by two Williams College sophomores, Misha Vitels and Peter Frelinghuysen, after seeing plastic waste on their campus. On site There is no single site. The placement is the cup itself, at whatever a student group is hosting: a fraternity or sorority party, a club event, a night at a college bar. Any student can sign up as an ambassador without belonging to an organization, and orders arrive by free delivery. Earth Cups has sponsored sorority rush at several universities, including chapters at Wisconsin. Track record Earth Cups launched in April 2021. Mark Cuban led a $2.5 million seed round in April 2022, and a $4.3 million Series A followed in November 2023. In May 2023 a closed-loop program at Princeton collected and composted more than 120,000 cups, and in March 2024 the company opened Earth Base, its production and distribution facility in Kansas City. Outside campus, Earth Brands' cups have gone to Cisco Brewers, Madison Square Garden and the Barclays Center. Brand presence A partner's mark goes on the cup with a QR code beside it, and packages are sold by cup volume. Brands can add activations on the campuses they choose.