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The city of Petaluma, California is inaugurating a new program to create a circular cup economy. Cafes, restaurants, and big chains have all been drafted into the effort to test whether this reusable cup program is feasible when scaled up.
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Sip, return, repeat
The idea behind the Petaluma Reusable Cup Project, as can be seen from the project website is simple: receive a drink in a reusable purple cup, drink and enjoy, and then toss the cup in one of the many designated return bins where it will be picked up, cleaned and sanitized and then used again.
The project is the brainchild of the Next Gen Consortium, a multi-year consortium with the goal of matchmaking innovators and big-brand companies to create more environmentally friendly food packaging, and is led by Closed Loop Partners, an investment firm that invests in circular economy products, according to a press release from the consortium.
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Not exactly the first
According to Fast Company, this is not the first project of its kind. There have been projects that have offered reusable cups at individual stores. However, the Petaluma project is the first of its size.
“It’s the first initiative that we’re aware of that will make reusable to-go cups the default option over single-use across multiple restaurants throughout a US city,” Kate Daly, managing director of the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners, told Fast Company.
The key is convenience, which apparently, trumps even financial incentivization. In previous projects customers had been financially incentivized to return their reusable cups. However, in that project, led by Starbucks, cups had to be returned to Starbucks stores, which can be less than convenient for a person on the run.
“The challenge is, especially when you have return bins only in Starbucks, that it’s hard to get all those cups back and really make the environmental impact that’s intended,” Amelia Landers, vice president of product experience and innovation at Starbucks, likewise told Fast Company.
And so, the Petaluma project decided that instead of using financial incentives, they would simply make it very easy to return the cups by installing return bins throughout the city. In this way, using a reusable cup would not be much different than using a disposable cup- the only difference is in what happens to the cup after it is thrown in a bin.
The project, according to the press release, will run from August 2024 to November 2024. An important part of the project will be to collect baseline data regarding public participation, environmental impact, and the ability to scale up projects like this to even bigger cities and markets.
Saving the world does not have to be difficult. The Petaluma Reusable Cup Project shows that with a little thought and innovation small acts can have a big impact. Who knows? Maybe one day instead of garbage cans full of disposable cups, cities will be dotted with bins full of reusable cups ready to be washed and used again.
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