Beverage giants Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are among the companies working with partners to replace disposable cups and trays at large events with reusable tableware systems.
PepsiCo’s collaboration with UEFA to install a circular cup and tray system at last year’s European Champions League final was a promising step towards reducing the huge amounts of plastic waste generated at major sporting events.
The Champions League final, which pits the top two teams in Europe’s men’s and women’s football respectively, will be played in huge stadiums with tens of thousands of spectators. The reuse pilot project built on a seemingly smaller one from the previous year, which focused mainly on bottles made from recycled plastic.
As consumer-facing companies begin to see the clear business benefits of moving from disposable to reusable in a variety of settings, food service is an area with the potential to make a big impact. Earlier this month, Petaluma, California, launched the first city-wide beverage cup reuse system, backed by brands such as Starbucks, The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Peet’s Coffee, and Yum! Brands. The goal is to create an operational scale model. Meanwhile, such pilot projects are becoming increasingly common at large event venues as the beverage and entertainment industries work together to reduce the overall amount of waste during major events.
“The momentum has been incredible,” Tina Swanson, chief revenue officer at R.world, a startup that supplies reusable tableware and manages the entire cleaning and return process, told Sustainable Brands.
R.world’s R.cup system is the cornerstone of a partnership with beverage giant Coca-Cola to pilot the product at several of its sports venues and relationships across North America.
R.cups have already been introduced at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, where Swanson reports a 98 percent return rate for those who have used the cups. While the initial pilot focused only on suite-level use, she says there are plans to roll out the partnership to all seating in the arena.
Coca-Cola didn’t provide any further details about the partnership, but Swanson said the beverage company aims to roll out r.World products “across all areas of our business.” It remains to be seen whether this will extend to Coca-Cola’s upcoming marquee sporting events, such as the 2024 Paris Olympics or the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
These pilot programs can also be a way for both beverage companies and sports venues to take another step towards achieving ambitious “zero waste” goals. UEFA and PepsiCo have a joint goal of achieving “zero waste to landfill” by the 2026 Champions League final. UEFA’s Director of Social and Environmental Sustainability Michel Uba did not comment when asked about progress towards the 2026 target, but PepsiCo told SB that the TURN system eliminated the use of more than 70,000 single-use plastic cups at the men’s final in Istanbul in 2023. And at the women’s final in Eindhoven, Netherlands, a similar program resulted in a 90 percent cup return rate and a 60 percent tray return rate.
The women’s final was the first match to pilot a returnable packaging program, with 52,000 40-centiliter cups available for purchase with a returnable deposit of €2, and Doritos nachos were served on returnable trays throughout the stadium. During the men’s final, 48,000 TURN smart cups were used, scanned at collection points, sanitized and reused through the company’s reuse system.
In the US, one example of a reuse pilot turning into a more permanent initiative is happening at the Moda Center arena in Portland, Oregon. The venue’s anchor tenant, the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers, worked with reusable cup supplier Bold Reuse to run a pilot similar to that of Coca-Cola and r.World, starting in suites and club levels before expanding to the arena’s 20,500 seats.
“We’ve seen a lot of momentum around reuse in the sports and entertainment sector,” Brittany Salisbury, the team’s sustainability operations manager, told SB.
The 2023-2024 season will mark the first stadium-wide deployment, with the team reporting a 73 percent return rate across 75 events, eliminating the need for more than 400,000 cups and the infrastructure to dispose of them. The system is fairly integrated, as used cups are sorted, taken away for sanitization, and returned for next use. This proof of concept has also spurred other sports teams, including the Kansas City Current of the National Women’s Soccer League, to take notice and work to implement their own reuse systems.
For now, larger sports and entertainment venues will likely see a higher ROI from reuse systems because they can provide cups and infrastructure at scale and more cheaply. Most of the initial growth in this area will likely happen there until the systems improve and become efficient enough to make sense for smaller organizations.
Release date: July 24, 2024 at 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST
Jeff Nudelman
Jeff is a freelance journalist and copywriter focused on making the world a better place through persuasive writing. He covers everything from apparel to travel and helps brands all over the world craft their messaging. He currently contributes to Sustainable Brands, as well as Penta, AskMen.com, Field Mag, and many other publications. You can find his work at geoffnudelman.com.