The collaboration, led by the NextGen Consortium, makes reusable cups the
default option in over 30 national and local restaurants across the City of
Petaluma, California.
Starbucks, The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Peet’s Coffee, Yum!
Brands, and other global and local brands and restaurants are partnering in
The Petaluma Reusable Cup Project — an unprecedented collaboration to drive
reuse.
Starting August 5, more than 30 restaurants in the City of Petaluma,
California will swap their single-use to-go cups for reusable cups for all
customers at no cost; and widespread return points will also be available across
the city. As the first initiative of its kind that makes reusable to-go cups the
default option across multiple restaurants in a US city, the program marks a
significant milestone for reuse — with the opportunity to drive more customers
to reuse and displace waste from hundreds of thousands of single-use cups.
The Petaluma Reusable Cup Project is focused on supporting customers to create
return habits — key to the success of reuse schemes. The city-wide initiative is
a critical step forward to catalyze and scale reuse systems, building on half a
decade of work by the NextGen
Consortium
— a collaboration managed by the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed
Loop Partners, in partnership with many
global foodservice brands.
The mix of large, national chains; local, independent restaurants; convenience
stores, community hubs and public locations gives this initiative distinct
potential in shaping consumer habits and cultural norms. More than 30 Petaluma
restaurants will participate in the initiative — including Starbucks and
licensed Starbucks cafés in Target and Safeway stores; Peet’s Coffee;
KFC and Yum!’s Habit Burger Grill; Dunkin’, and many local cafés and
restaurants. The initiative was made possible through extensive public-private
collaboration, with support and engagement from the
City of
Petaluma, Zero Waste
Sonoma, Recology, community groups and local businesses.
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“It takes an entire community to build the future of reuse that we want to see,”
says Michael
Kobori, chief
sustainability officer at Starbucks — which in January became the first US
coffee retailer to accept reusable and personal cups
nationwide.
“Our environmental promise is core to our business and that’s why we’re working
toward a future vision of every Starbucks beverage served in a reusable cup.
Together with fellow foodservice brands, local stores and community
stakeholders, we’re leading this initiative to help further unlock behavior
change toward reusables — making it easy for our customers, and any customer,
to choose to reuse and reduce waste.”
Across the US, 50 billion
single-use
cups are
purchased and disposed of each year. Most of these cups are provided in a
restaurant and disposed of at home, work or school — with an average lifespan of
less than one hour before going to waste, according to the Center for the
Circular Economy’s research. While reuse is growing quickly, use of personal
cups and existing takeaway reusable-cup systems still face low adoption or low
returns. For reuse to scale
responsibly,
it’s imperative to create an easy and enjoyable consumer experience that makes
it easy for customers to remember to bring their own containers or to return one
that was given to them.
“To create a world without packaging waste, we need to ensure that food
packaging reuse systems are scaled in a way that creates a positive
environmental impact––meeting the current needs of people while driving a
cultural shift toward reuse,” says Kate
Daly, Managing Director and Head of the
Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners. “By testing reuse
across an entire city in partnership with key stakeholders from the community
and industry, we can scale reuse collaboratively through thoughtful
experimentation — building a future where reuse is the norm.”
Petaluma, California — located in the northern San Francisco Bay Area —
was selected for the initiative for many reasons. In this region, businesses and
consumers are receptive to adopting reuse, given the policy environment
promoting the phase-out of non-recyclable, single-use packaging. The city also
participated in a returnable-cup
pilot
at participating Starbucks locations in 2023. The size and dense layout of
downtown Petaluma — with its tight cluster of restaurants and local shops within
walking distance, and proximity to suburban and rural areas — creates the right
conditions for testing a reuse system for to-go cups. Collaboration with local
stakeholders has helped adapt the initiative to local policy and infrastructure,
identify optimal return points across the city and engage the broader community.
“The City of Petaluma is laying the groundwork to make cup reuse not only an
option, but the default,” says Mayor Kevin
McDonnell. “We have an
amazing, engaged community; and we look forward to assisting the success of this
program, alongside our local restaurants and participating global brands that
service our community.”
"Imagine a neighborhood where all to-go cups are reusable, and returning these
cups required no extra steps. By making reusable cups as convenient and
accessible as single use, we can offer an alternative for residents when they
forget to bring their own cups with them,” says Leslie
Lukacs, Executive Director
of Zero Waste Sonoma — the county in which
Petaluma sits. “Universal accessibility creates the foundation for a cultural
shift towards reuse.”
The Petaluma Reusable Cup Project will install more than 60 cup-return bins
across Petaluma. After use and return, the reusable cups will be collected,
washed and recirculated for future uses by participating businesses and
customers. Muuse — maker of a smart reusable-cup system that
won the NextGen Cup
Challenge
in 2019 and went on to participate in the NextGen Circular Business
Accelerator —
was selected by the NextGen Consortium to manage all servicing and reverse
logistics for the initiative.
“Transitioning to returnable packaging systems is a critical part of reducing
single-use packaging waste, and we need to focus on supporting the operations
behind it. These systems must be thoughtfully and responsibly implemented to
ensure we are minimizing our impact of creating more waste in the process,” says
Muuse COO & co-founder Brittany Gamez.
“It is through initiatives like this that we can identify what is needed to
operationalize shared systems at this level and inform how reuse is implemented
at scale.”
The Petaluma initiative, which runs until November, will collect baseline data
that measures customer participation and the environmental impact of making
reusables
the default choice for customers — testing whether the model is operationally
viable for scale. Data from the initiative can be leveraged by businesses and
regulators to support them as they design new reuse systems and draft
well-informed packaging regulations.
Since 2018, the NextGen Consortium, its brand partners and the Center for the
Circular Economy ecosystem have been at the forefront of the reuse movement. In
2019 and 2020, the NextGen Consortium launched trials in
the San Francisco Bay Area to understand how reusable cup programs might operate
simultaneously across multiple restaurants, leading to a foundational reuse
report.
The Center for the Circular Economy’s work to advance reuse also extends beyond
the cup. In 2023, its Consortium to Reinvent the Retail Bag released a
playbook
for enabling near-term reductions in single-use plastic bags that can be
implemented by retailers of any size — in partnership with CVS Health,
Target, Walmart and other leading retailers.
The NextGen Consortium says it will continue its work and collaboration with
stakeholders from across the reuse value chain, from innovators and activists to
global brands and policymakers, to effectively scale reuse
systems
that eliminate industry waste.
Published Jul 9, 2024 9am EDT / 6am PDT / 2pm BST / 3pm CEST
Sustainable Brands Staff
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