Inspiration

Cardiff’s Pioneering Coffee Cup Refill Scheme

Calling all hot beverage lovers! An estimated 2.5 billion takeaway cups are used and thrown away each year in the UK – 99% of these are not currently recycled.

Launched last month, the Cardiff Refill Return Cup Scheme enables people to borrow a reusable takeaway cup from a participating café and return it at a later date so that it can be washed and used again and again.

The scheme has been brought to life by FOR Cardiff with the help of £90,000 funding from the UK government through the Shared Prosperity Fund. FOR Cardiff have partnered with the environmental charity City to Sea to create a refill app that allows residents to easily find locations to pick up and drop off their reusable cups. The pilot scheme is projected to prevent up to 30,000 single-use cups from entering Cardiff’s waste stream by March 2025

In its first month the return scheme has seen more than 2.500 cups borrowed and a 97% return rate in the first month. It has estimated to have saved 43kg of CO2. All cafes involved are also providing a minimum 15p for customers using reusable cups.

Cardiff Business School and Greenwich Business School are currently evaluating the scheme’s impact, with the goal of creating a blueprint for other cities in the UK to follow.