My favorite thing to do is have a “button making party” where you grab a handful of people and go to someone’s house and hand out(order some pizza, listen to some music, find old recordings of people in a play in elementary school(/s), ect) for some number of hrs. This is a gif of us making over 1k in one night. And a photo of the final result:
A very important thing is to try to get everyone to say busy the entire time and engaged in the process.
In our 2 competitions this past year, we went through ~300 buttons for comp 1 (running out halfway through), and ~600 buttons for comp 2 (ran out evening day 2/morning day 3). Still not 3000, but 500 would not be enough for us
I’ve used https://buttonsonline.com/ for many years and always had a great Quality and turnaround time.
I am convinced that 99% of buttons are in the trash within a year. I find the whole button giveaway thing exhausting and ecologically indefensible.
On the other hand I still have a TJ² measuring tape from about 2003.
We have started giving away mostly hair ties, some stickers, and grasshopper cookies instead of buttons.
E112: possibly the least observed rule
HQ: just drop this one, eh?
Dropping off a box of cookies with pit admin first thing at an event buys a lot of grace 
We’re not allowed to distribute food for legal reasons.
Also probably a bad idea to condone eating in work areas like the pits.
Be sensible and venue staff don’t have to enforce it.
Legal? Doubtful.
Contractual? Probabl. If in a big venue, so their vendors can gouge you 3x street price for food. IMO, another reason for districts or district-like competitions in high school gyms.
Food service laws are real and no joke. Prepackaged stuff from a commercial kitchen is fine, but a bowl of chips is not legal to leave out for people to grab with their hands.
OSHA also doesn’t love food in work areas - I’ve had students joke about eating aluminum chips in their dinners while watching the mill, but uncovered water cups are not allowed in any industrial work area I’ve ever been in - much less food. FRC pits have all the same hazards.
Contractual with the venue is the other side of course.
Easier to ban it all formally, and allow local events to pick their battles.
I’m not a lawyer, but my understanding, at least in my state, is that such laws do not apply to non-commercial gatherings (eg potlucks, office parties, picnics, etc)
To be clear: we aim to give a team a sealed retail box of grasshopper cookies. What they do after that is out of my hands.
As a team that has recieved such an awesome gift of a box of grasshoppers… thank you they are sooooo good! 95 is an amazing team to work with and so much fun.
most people I know that collect buttons keep and display them on their clothes year after year. most people I know that would throw away buttons don’t collect them in the first place
I don’t hold out much hope for the ones taken by little kids, but I assume most FRC’ers either put them on clothes, or like my daughter, in a pin book, or like me, on a cork board.
Last year, suffering from button-making fatigue, we decided to purchase buttons for events and hand-make only the custom buttons for team members. We went with CheapestButtons.net. They are one city west of us and everything was perfect and on time.
It’s a form of marketing, just like any other SWAG companies and groups give away at trade shows.
It also generates interface between students and other teams which can create valuable social interactions.
Give out a sticker. It would use the same, or less, paper product, none of the plastic film covering, and none of the metal. They are less expensive than buttons, use less energy and space to ship, and are probably easier to source. Trade shows are wonderfully wasteful, perhaps not what we should be aiming to emulate.
A sticker can wind up on a laptop or water bottle or whatever and be viewed many more times than a button that is thrown out, stuck on clothing only worn at FRC events, or sitting in a button book. Absolute worst case: a sticker takes up less space in the landfill than a button, but still triggers the same interactions.
I stuck a grasshopper sticker on my mug at work and that has sparked many conversations about FRC.
As a sticker enthusiast I highly support this sentiment.
Generally, there are many more better places to put a sticker than a pin. An FRC sticker goes anywhere it’ll stick, and it looks cool there, and as you said, starts conversations etc. An FRC pin goes in cloth only, and the cloth it’s stuck in is usually either seldom worn or quickly de-pinned.
In other words, stickers are more useful.
