A line of purple, plastic cups grows longer on the counter at Avid Coffee as Sam Gearhard takes orders at the Petaluma, California, location on a recent weekday morning.
The cups may seem unremarkable, but they’re part of a groundbreaking new plan that’s got the community excited. Instead of the disposable paper or plastic cups Gearhard would normally leave in line for the barista serving espresso, he’s passing out shiny new reusable cups with the slogan “Sip, Return, Repeat.” Customers who want to take their lattes to go can take the purple cups and then return them to one of 60 bins scattered throughout downtown Petaluma when they’re done. Each cup comes with a trackable QR code so they can track their results.
So far, Gearhard says, 30 businesses have signed up for the program in downtown Petaluma, a charming wine town about 50 miles north of San Francisco. And at Avid, they’ve only given out reusable cups since the project began, except to the occasional outsider who asks for a paper cup to take with them on a trip. “It’s been a really nice, easy adjustment for us,” Gearhard says. “I was worried that people wouldn’t take to it as well as they do now.”
Holding a cup of coffee as we talk, I’m impressed that the espresso doesn’t burn my hand through the plastic wall. And while their purple color is very purple, I appreciate that the cups are pristine—notably more professionally sanitized than similar cups I’ve encountered in food courts and cafeterias. The stores don’t have to clean the cups themselves—they’re washed by a third-party logistics company—which means there’s one less thing businesses have to worry about when making the switch.
This month, Petaluma became the first in the U.S. to launch a citywide reusable cup program aimed at reducing the 50 billion disposable cups purchased and thrown away in the U.S. each year. Thirty companies, ranging from small shops like Avid to chains like Starbucks and Taco Bell, have agreed to distribute the reusable cups as part of a pilot project.
The social norm of using disposable cups is deeply ingrained in our contemporary lives
Alastair Iles, professor at UC Berkeley
The move comes as California leads the U.S. in the fight to phase out single-use plastics, with the state passing a law in 2022 requiring all packaging to be recyclable or compostable by 2032. Last year, Los Angeles County passed a ban on single-use plastics in restaurants, and earlier this year, the city of Berkeley passed the nation’s most comprehensive food packaging law.
“We have a really strong interest in climate mitigation because we’ve experienced our own climate challenges,” said Leslie Lukacs, executive director of Zero Waste Sonoma, a local environmental agency, citing recent wildfires and flooding in the region. It’s “an environment that’s politically driven to address climate change, but also community driven.”
The Petaluma Reusable Cup Project officially launched on August 1, when local businesses began handing out reusable cups; chains followed suit on August 5. So far, restaurants and their customers seem to be adapting well to the change—and are proud of it.
Related: The Disposable Cup Crisis: What’s the Environmental Impact of a Coffee on the Go?
Outside of Stellina Pronto, one of the participating cafes, mother and daughter Bonnie and Claire McDonell — who met halfway between their homes in Sebastopol and San Francisco for lunch — noted that in the future they might specifically choose a restaurant based on whether it offered the reusable option.
Down the road at Fiber Circle Studio, store owner Alisha Bright said she’d already used four cups in her first week of the program—one sat on her counter—and she praised the quality of the cups, which kept drinks colder longer than the usual single-use plastic cups. She’d had a lemonade from The Bagel Mill earlier in the week and noticed that the ice was still stuck in the cup an hour after she’d bought it—though she also noted that she’d collected a few cups at home that she’d had to return.
A number of companies, investment firms and startups collaborated to design, organize and finance the project, including Closed Loop Partners, a New York-based investment firm focused on the circular economy; Starbucks; Coca-Cola; PepsiCo; Peet’s Coffee and Yum! Brands.
Together, they’ve partnered with the city of Petaluma, Zero Waste Sonoma, and local recycling program Recology to see if the program is viable and can be scaled in other cities. One of the key metrics they’re tracking is how many cups are actually returned.
Reusable products almost always have a greater environmental impact to produce and clean, so the number of times they’re reused is key to determining whether they’re better for the environment than disposables, says Jessica Heiges, zero waste and circularity project leader at WSP, an environmental consultancy.
Heiges is not affiliated with the project, but she was involved with Vessel, a reusable program being tested in the city of Berkeley before the pandemic, while she was working on her PhD. She is hopeful for the future of the Petaluma project because it “makes the reusable option as convenient as the disposable option.”
Related: ‘It Just Didn’t Work’: How Companies Struggle with Reusable Packaging
Each reusable cup in the project is tagged with a QR code, allowing Closed Loop to collect data on which return bins are used most often, whether cups end up in the trash or recycling, and whether it would be helpful for residents to have their cups collected from their homes. Kate Daly, managing director and head of the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners, said in an email that the company will also collect data on how far the cups travel and how much water and energy they require to wash.
The choice of a reusable plastic cup was also part of the consideration.
“While metal, glass and ceramic are ideal materials for personal and reusable mugs, it makes more sense to use plastic for to-go cups,” Daly says, because they are lighter, easier to transport and less likely to break.
While there’s been a lot of local enthusiasm, experts point out that the plan is likely to face obstacles. “The focus on a relatively small city center helps, but there will still be a lot of transportation, cup pickup, and washing,” Alastair Iles, a professor of sustainability transitions at UC Berkeley, said in an email. He added that it will require close monitoring of return bins (so they don’t overfill), consumer behavior (and whether customers are willing to return cups) and the needs of the business. “The social norm of using disposable cups is deeply ingrained in our contemporary lives.”
Related: A (largely) scientific ranking of takeaway containers – from best to worst for the environment
In Petaluma, the reusable cup project will last until November. What happens after that depends on how it goes — and how it can be implemented and funded by future cities or companies.
In the first week alone, Petaluma has learned a lot, says Ashley Harris, owner of Petaluma Coffee and Tea, which is participating in the project. “As a coffee shop, we see a tremendous amount of waste. It’s painful and heartbreaking, and it’s part of our business. So if there’s a way to do better, we’ll do it.”
