By Plasteurope.com correspondent

A first-of-its-kind citywide reusable cup project, in which more than thirty restaurants in the US city of Petaluma, California, will let customers swap their single-use to-go cups for reusable cups for free, will take place from August to November 2024.

The Petaluma Reusable Cup Project is an initiative that will test a food packaging reuse programme. It was launched by the NextGen Consortium, a partnership founded by Starbucks and McDonald’s that addresses single-use food packaging waste by advancing the design, commercialisation, and recovery of food-service packaging alternatives. The initiative is also designed to foster return habits for customers, NextGen Consortium said.

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The consortium is led by US investment firm Closed Loop Partners’ (New York, New York; www.closedlooppartners.com) Center for the Circular Economy. It is working with Singapore-based Muuse (www.muuse.io), which developed a traceable and serialised reuse and returnable packaging platform for the project. 

The cups are to be collected, washed, and recirculated by Muuse’s system through participating businesses and customers.

NextGen said that more than sixty cup-return bins will be installed at participating large national food service chains, local independent restaurants, convenience stores, community hubs, and public locations across Petaluma. Muuse will manage all servicing and reverse logistics for the initiative, according to the consortium.

The project also aims to collect baseline data measuring customer participation and the environmental impact of offering reusables as the default choice for customers. Data from the initiative can be leveraged by businesses and regulators to support them as they design reuse systems and as they draft packaging regulations, the consortium noted.