Reusable cup schemes

In Scotland, we use about 388.7 million single-use beverage cups every year.  That’s a lot of waste ending up in landfill or even worse, littering our streets.  

Coffee-on-the-go is huge part of our culture:  who doesn’t love a latte on a cold frosty morning while waiting for the train?  And many of us in our efforts to be environmentally friendly, have become accustomed to remembering our reusable cup, along with our reusable shopping bags and water bottle.  With our busy lives, if we forget our reusable cup, we can always reach for a takeaway cup at the counter. One that often cannot be recycled due to being made of composite materials.  

And so here enters a gap in the market.  Many coffee shops sell reusable cups to keep, another one to stack up in the back of the cupboard. Customers don’t need another reusable cup to clutter up their lives. What if they could just borrow a cup instead? Pay a deposit to borrow the cup and then return it at a later date.   

This sounds like a great business idea. What’s more, earlier research we conducted around the single-use plastics ban showed that 77% of people in Scotland are concerned by the amount of single-use packaging and items we use, indicating that reusable packaging schemes could be an attractive alternative to many.

Zero Waste Scotland has supported trials of reusable cup takeback schemes with businesses in Scotland as part of its Ditching Disposables project.  The results of the Stirling and Portobello projects are available online, along with some examples of other schemes across Scotland and beyond. A reusable scheme for cups allows customers to ‘borrow’ a cup.

The following are just some examples of how this could work;

• it could be a free scheme where a customer borrows a cup and returns it
• a customer pays a small deposit which is repaid when the cup is returned
• the customer uses an app which charges the customer if the cup isn’t returned
• the customer pays a deposit via an app and the deposit is refunded to the app.

The scheme could be managed by the hospitality business themselves, or may be operated by a third party.

As part of the ban on certain single-use plastics in Scotland which was introduced in June 2022, the manufacture and supply of cups made from expanded polystyrene and their lids is now unlawful.   

In 2024 the Scottish Government consulted on the proposal to put a charge on single-use disposables beverage cups in order to shift more people towards reusable alternatives.

Offering a return service for reusable cups is an action that has been highlighted as a key way to tackle consumption of single use cups by the Scottish Government’s Expert Panel on Environmental Charging and Other Measures (EPECOM).    

Some businesses are opting to get ahead of the curve and put into practice proactive measures to address consumption reduction of single-use cups not only due to these potential future policy measures, but also because its advantageous to do so.  

• Builds a relationship with customers, incentivising them to return with their cup on a future visit
• Shows customers your business is willing to try alternative operating model to tackle the climate emergency 
• Reduces the cost of having to buy stocks of single-use cups
• The cost of the deposit is designed to cover the cost of the cup, allowing for non-returned cups to be replaced