News / Sustainability
New reusable coffee cup scheme to launch in Bristol
A new pilot scheme hopes to go some way to tackling the problem of single-use coffee cups in Bristol.
The Bristol Refill Cup Scheme, launching on Thursday on World Refill Day, will allow people across the city to borrow a reusable takeaway cup from a cafe and then return it so it can be used again.
No cafes are yet signed up to the scheme, but it is expected to begin by the autumn as part of the Refill campaign from City to Sea, with the existing Refill app – already helping to find locations to eat, drink and shop with less plastic – enabling coffee drinkers to find where to pick up and drop off their reusable cups.
is needed now More than ever
The borrowed cup will be free to use but customers will need to return it to a participating cafe to avoid being fined.
It comes as Boston Tea Party reveal that since they banned single use coffee cups from their cafes in June 2018, they have saved more than 800,000 cups from landfill.
On World Refill Day, 48 free reusable cups are being given away in each of their five cafes across Bristol.
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Read more: New bins to prevent millions of disposable cups in Bristol going to waste
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City to Sea head of development, Jane Martin, said: “Our Refill campaign already stops over 100m pieces of plastic a year, but we are ambitious to do more.
“By expanding the Refill campaign to help people not only find free drinking water and other locations to refill on the go, our goal is to turn the tide on single-use plastic across the city – helping to keep our streets, parks and iconic harbourside free from pollution.
“This reusable returnable cup scheme in Bristol is designed to prevent 250,000 single-use hot drink cups from entering the waste stream every day.
“The project, launching across Bristol, will act as a pilot to better understand the most effective way to operate the system and engage the public before rolling it out in other major cities across the country in the future.”
CanCan was launched by Jim Pizer (left) and Dan Wright (right) in 2021 but only five traders in Bristol are part of the reusable cup scheme – photo: Martin Booth
Retailers signing up to the Bristol Refill Cup Scheme will order reusable cups via a subscription.
When a customer comes in for a coffee, they will be given the option to have their coffee in a reusable cup, with the barista scanning a QR code on the cup which will give ownership of the cup to the customer.
Using the Refill app, the customer will be reminded to return the cup to participating retailers who scan it back in and wash it to ensure it can be used again.
Main photo: Martin Booth
Read more: What are Bristol’s best cafes?
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