From Take-Make-Waste to Reuse-Refill-Return

The City of London is a vibrant, bustling hub of history, innovation, and commerce. And these days, along with most cities around the world, largely powered on coffee. Yet despite various attempts, pilots and campaigns to get coffee cup recycling off the ground (and into our bins), coffee cups are still creating mountains of needless waste. Around 14 million single-use cups are thrown away every day in the UK, with recent studies suggesting recycling rates are anything between 1-6% … meaning the rest are being incinerated, landfilled, or littering our environment.

At City to Sea, the campaigning organisation set up in 2015 to tackle plastic pollution, we believe in looking further up the waste hierarchy than recycling, to the lofty but lovely heights of an accessible circular economy. Whilst we acknowledge some plastic has a place in today’s society, we don’t believe it should be used for on-the-go, single-use packaging, like in the case of the humble but all-too-disposable coffee cup.

So that’s why we’re focused on the transition to circular economies in our cities, starting with something as simple as our morning coffee. In 2023 we launched our first Refill Return Cup scheme. The idea is to tackle the disposable coffee cup crisis by introducing a reusable cup system that’s convenient, sustainable, and user-friendly. Here’s how it works: you borrow a cup for your coffee, enjoy your drink, and return the cup to any participating café. The cafe collects up the cups, washes them and restocks them on top the coffee machine ready for the next day. We then redistribute the cups between cafes as required. Simple, yet transformative.

 Since launching the Refill Return Cup pilot in Bristol in August 2023, over 1100 people have borrowed a reusable cup from their favourite coffee shop (30 in total), saving 6900 single-use cups from the waste stream. While this number is a drop in the ocean compared to the millions of single-use cups used every day, the system has proven that another way is possible.

Taking our learnings from the Bristol pilot, we launched the scheme at Bath Spa University where they took the brave decision to ditch disposable cups from their five catering out

lets. Students and staff have accepted the change with enthusiasm and the default behaviour is now to either bring their own reusable cup or borrow one through the Refill Return Cup system. The cup return rate at Bath Spa is as fantastic 98 percent, proving the sustainability credentials of the scheme! Success in Bristol and Bath caught the attention of the city of Cardiff, which will be the next location for the Refill Return Cup, launching across 20 outlets this autumn.

Despite early successes, for this transition to succeed, widespread participation and support are essential. Businesses must invest in and promote reusable options, take single-use off the menu (or at least charge a behaviour changing levy) policymakers need to create favourable conditions for such schemes, and everyday folk like us must embrace these changes in our daily routines. It’s about shifting our mindset from a throwaway culture to one of sustainability and responsibility.

Within the City of London Livery Companies and Guilds Climate Action Strategy is the potential to lead the charge towards a more circular economy, setting an example for the rest of the world to follow. By rethinking how we use resources and embracing innovative solutions, we can continue to create a cleaner, greener, and more resilient city. Imagine a London where waste bins aren’t overflowing with disposable cups, where every coffee shop proudly offers and accepts reusable cups, and where people are actively engaged in reducing their environmental footprint. We imagine this daily and it’s what drives us to keep going and make it a reality!

So next time you grab your morning coffee to-go, consider how different it could be. If you don’t already carry a reusable cup, start there, and support businesses that are making a difference in terms of encouraging discounts on reusable cups. And if you want to work together to support a Refill Return scheme in the city, let’s … have a coffee?

www.citytosea.org.uk / www.refill.org.uk / nat@citytosea.org.uk

FOUNDER, CITY TO SEA
07871 397868