Yoyo Cups, a new Edinburgh initiative to combat climate change and save money with every takeaway tea or coffee has launched a waste-cutting partnership with Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU).
Scots use 200 million single use cups a year – just one in 400 are recycled and the rest end up as landfill or litter, polluting streets, rivers and oceans. What’s more, materials and transport are making them increasingly costly for caterers.
Yoyo Cups, the country’s brand new reusable cup leasing service, solve the problem – customers pay a modest deposit to get their takeaway drink in a stylish reusable steel cup which is refunded when it’s returned.
Each cup just needs to be used and returned nine times to be carbon neutral and when it eventually needs to be replaced it is 100% recyclable.
Crucially, customers can keep the cup and get it refilled as often as they like then return it to any participating outlet.
Yoyo Cups are being pioneered by Ostrero, an Edinburgh-based organisation dedicated to using good design and new thinking to eliminate waste and promote a circular economy.
Co-founders Mary Michel, from Edinburgh and Marian Brown, from Moffat, are delighted to be teaming up with a major institution to run a large scale pilot project.
Mary said: “Single use cups have to go – the waste, the pollution and the increasing financial cost makes them unsustainable in every way.
“Having an organisation the size of GCU on board for a large-scale pilot project underlines what a gamechanger this could be.
“We are also trialling them with a series of independent cafes, which shows that they are ideal for every kind of customer and every size of business.”
GCU describes the scheme as a “Cup Library” allowing students and staff to get refills as many times as they like and return it when it suits them. The trial which is being run by caterer BaxterStory at the Sir Alex Ferguson library and two of their other campus cafes, will involve 1,000 cups.
Paulo Cruz, GCU’s Sustainability Officer, said: “We’re launching the GCU Yoyo Cup Library because it supports our commitment to zero waste. At GCU single-use cups account for around 5% of our general waste, all of which is processed into a refuse-derived fuel. Also, in a recent survey more than 85% of students who took part want disposable cups to be phased out. Yoyo Cups are zero waste by design and will help us reduce this difficult-to-recycle waste stream at source.”
The Yoyo Cups name came from Marian’s sons who had been on a trip to a beach and wanted to help find ways to reduce the amount of litter being washed up on the Scottish coast.
She said: “Mary and I felt that a good name was really important to getting across how the scheme worked and to describe the benefits, but nothing we thought of really worked.
“But after a visit to the beach with my children we were talking about it they just said ‘it’s like a yoyo’ and that was it, the magic moment of inspiration.
“The idea just sums up everything, the cups keep being returned to the café, the cafes return their old cups to us, the materials for the cups keep on being returned to make new products – the ultimate in yoyos.”
The benefits of Yoyo Cups for consumers are:
- Forgotten your reusable cup? No problem!
- Cost-neutral. Deposit is fully refundable when the cup is returned to any café in the Yoyo Cups network.
- Convenient and easy to use.
- Eco-friendly, sustainable, waste-free option on the go.
- Well-made with double walls to keep drinks hot (or cold) for longer.
- Cool to the touch.
- Tracking system lets users see their (46.6g of CO2e per use) carbon savings grow.
- Highly durable.
The benefits of Yoyo Cups for cafes are:
- Money saving – cups are leased with a monthly subscription and a deposit not bought.
- Attract eco-conscious customers by providing a high quality reusable alternative to single-use cups.
- Cuts waste collection costs.
- Minimises your café’s carbon footprint.
- Makes sustainability appealing with attractive design of reusable cups.
