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In the U.S., over 50 billion single-use cups are used every year, most of which are wasted after use and end up in landfills. Serving beverages in reusable cups offers a path to less waste but innovators have often struggled to design reusable systems that can scale across multiple brands and locations. In Petaluma, CA, and with our NextGen Consortium brand partners, we embarked on a bold initiative that asked, “How might an entire city embrace reuse as a reality?”
coffee shops and restaurants recruited
reusable cups returned
of purple cups purchased downtown were successfully returned
of local residents who were given a reusable cup reported returning at least one
Designing for communitywide accessibility, we recruited a diverse range of 30 coffee shops and restaurants, from national brands to local businesses, which widened the access to points-of-sale and to the citywide network of return bins. To ensure reuse would become a reality for all customers we designed the system to be the default option at participating businesses, with no fee or deposits charged at point of use.
A key challenge for reuse programs operating without deposits is the risk of loss; if consumers aren’t motivated to return the product, a system can quickly become environmentally and financially unviable. Our research showed that consumers felt a beautiful reusable product might be too nice to return — but a boring one is not worth returning at all. With an iterative design process, we designed a cup with just enough perceived value to motivate consumers to return after use.
The first phase of the Petaluma Reusable Cup project ran for three months in 2024 and quickly became one of the most successful, fully inclusive and accessible resume programs in the world. Over 220,000 cups were returned and put back into service, replacing the volume of single-use cups that would normally have been used. Most importantly, the program surpassed a significant milestone called the environmental break-even point — meaning that enough of the program’s purple cups were successfully returned for the reusable system to be better for the environment.
The innovative initiative received national and international coverage and quickly gained local support, with over 80% of local participants saying they hoped the project will continue to a second phase.
We are part of Closed Loop Partners—which includes the largest privately held recycling company in the U.S. and one of the largest circular economy capital management groups in the world—we’re uniquely positioned to bring research, design, and real-world implementation together.
