International coffee chain Blue Bottle has presented a no-single-use-cups approach in two of its locations. As CEO Bryan Meehan explained the innovation via a blog post last week, the change is a part of its move towards zero waste by 2020.
Blue Bottle’s new approach to using reusable-cup-only policy becomes an attempt to decrease CO2 pressure on the environment. Since January 1st, the new policy works in two of its San Francisco area stores, both in the Bay area.
Under the general plan of changes, the international chain of coffee shops has already committed to achieving zero waste in all of its United States locations by the end of 2020.
According to the experts, the low-waste initiative could remove up to 15,000 disposable cups from use each month, per café. The idea is the customers must either bring in their own reusable mug or pay a small deposit to take away one of the café’s cups. The café’s cups are returnable for cleaning and reuse.
Despite providing fully compostable cups and straws, the Blue Bottle chain found that most customers threw them away anyway, thus not reducing landfill waste. Company’s team acknowledges the experimental quality of its new approach, yet believes it to be essential in the decarbonization of a business.
Innovation in the food and beverages industries continues to push retail in multiple directions, whether that is in projects that use coffee grounds to create biofuel. Nowadays, thousands of solutions to the problem of disposable cups are not hard to find. The environmentally-friendly changes are necessary for long-term sustainability to take root in the HoReCa niche.
