Danish city put out vending machines for people to return their coffee cups and get paid

Heather Wake
Sat, 25 Jan 2025 00:38:51 +0000

Over 1 billion people worldwide drink coffee every day. That's about 12.6% of the world's population. And of course, there are a bajillion different ways people conjure up their cup of joe, but many opt for swinging by their local café. Problem is, those single-use cups, as we know, create a ton of waste.

Many heavy hitter coffee companies like Starbucks and McDonald’s have made attempts to tackle this issue by incentivizing customers to use reusable cups in exchange for a discount, but one city has a different approach…and it seems to be making a big impact.

One year ago, Aarhus, Denmark’s second-largest city, launched a three-year, first-of-its-kind trial project, where customers can return their reusable coffee cups to automated deposit machines placed throughout town and in return they'll receive a 70-cent rebate back to their debit card.

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Once those to-go cups are returned, they’re transported to the TOMRA cleaning/recycling facility, and, barring any damage, will be sent back to participating cafés. According to Euro News, 45 different businesses signed up for the innovative program.

"All of us, we want to have some kind of impact on the amount of trash that's lying around and especially us coffee shops,” said Joe Hougaard, a manager for one of the participating shops.

This scheme is similar to methods introduced by other European countries like Romania, Denmark, and Belgium, which involve deposit systems for returning plastic or glass bottles and cans in exchange for a small refund. However, those machines are only located within supermarkets. The Aarhus system, however, is open air, meaning the machines are located on main shopping streets with a lot of through traffic.

As reported by Daniela De Lorenzo, the project wasn’t an overnight success. Over the initial few weeks after the launch, the return rate was only around 25 per cent, and unfortunately a return rate of 82 per cent would be needed in order for the reusable cups to actually be a better alternative.

However, things turned around in September 2024, when the city held a week-long festival and the reusable cups were exclusively offered. “Many more citizens were exposed to them and around 100,000 cups were returned, an amount which would have filled 1,200 trash bins,” she wrote.

This became a catalyst for change, one that Simon Smedegaard Rossau, project manager for circular packaging at Aarhus Municipality, signaled a noticeable “shift in behavior.”

“We see people going with bags full of cups, which means they recycle in bulk, like for cans and bottles. Now we can see the return rate is 88 per cent, which means a cup is reused 44 times.”

We are only in year one of a three year trial period, but if things continue like this, there are plans to extend the program to plates, pizza boxes and more throughout the city. All of which could be promising for other cities looking for more sustainable systems.

As Tove Andersen, TOMRA CEO, said in a press release, "Aarhus shows the way to one more sustainable future, and we hope that many more cities will be inspired to do the same.”