The Again Again cup recycling scheme is about to be trialled in Wellington, with 14 cafés taking part in the pilot. The cup recycling scheme is part of the effort to reduce the estimated 295 million cups which are sent to landfill every year, and while compostable options are available, they are very rarely disposed of in the correct manner.
Customers at participating cafés will pay a three-dollar refundable deposit for a reusable steel cup and a cardboard heat-sleeve. Once purchased, the customer can reuse the cup as often as they’d like, before returning it to any of the cafés in the network and getting their money back.
Again Again estimates that one café pouring half of their coffees into a resuable cup will save around 20,000 cups a year from that single store. The company plans to displace 20 percent of single-use cups at 20 percent of all New Zealand cafés, forecasting to divert more than 12 million cups a year from landfill – 176 tonnes of waste.
