People Are Paid to Return Coffee Cups in This City–Spoiler Alert, it Worked
Three years after the Danish city of Aarhus launched an initiative to cut back on carry-out coffee cups, three-quarters of a million cups have been reused.
This has resulted in €514,000 being paid out in the form of little €70-cent rebates to conscious consumers who return their coffee cups to depositories located around the city.
Reusable is now a government-backed firm that distributes thick plastic coffee cups and lids to local cafes. Large vending machine-like installations dot the city where these large cups can be returned for a rebate on the cost of the coffee.
“Through waste analysis, we discovered that 45% of waste in Aarhus came from takeaway packaging,” Simon Smedegaard Rossau, project manager for circular packaging at Aarhus Municipality, told Euro News. “This finding was a turning point.”
In 2024, hoping to address this waste stream, the company launched a three-year trial with Reusable and a Norwegian company called TOMRA which makes the collection machines.
Similar collection machines and ideas can be found in several cities in Europe, but Aarhus took an open-air approach, putting the machines in popular shopping areas and places that are thick with coffee shops.
45 city cafes were brought under the banner of the initiative upon its launch to try and get the word out as fast as possible to change mindsets. During the city’s week-long festival Aarhus Uke in September, event concession companies agreed to exclusively use the Reusable cups.
By the end of the event, 100,000 cups had been used and returned, an amount that would fill up 1,200 wheeled curbside trash bins. Rossau said it had a big impact.
OTHER DANISH IDEAS: Pick Up Litter and Get Free Stuff in Copenhagen This Summer Through Eco-Conscious Rewards Program
“We now see shifts in behavior. We see people going with bags full of cups, which means they recycle in bulk, like for cans and bottles,” says Rossau. “Now we can see the return rate is 88% which means a cup is reused 44 times.”
14 metric tons of plastic were saved during the program, which saw 235,000 more cups used and deposited in the first year than had been anticipated. The next goal is to see if these cups could be used and deposited 1.5 million times.
MORE INNOVATIVE REUSE PROGRAMS: This Startup Is Using Dead Leaves to Make Paper Without Cutting Trees
Aarhus is a smaller city, and the program’s stakeholders hope to expand outward into suburban communities where Aarhus commuters may live, as well as to add other kinds of food and beverage packaging to the program.
SHARE Denmark Getting Out In Front Of Its Waste Problems…
>read more at © GoodNews
Views: 0