A small California city just showed the country how to make reusable cups part of everyday life.
The Petaluma Reusable Cup Project, the first citywide program in the U.S. to offer reusable to-go cups at no cost to customers, has proven that switching from throwaway cups can work at scale. The initiative brought together major companies like Starbucks, The Coca-Cola Company, and PepsiCo with local businesses to replace single-use cups with purple reusable alternatives.
A statement revealed more than 220,000 cups were returned throughout the three-month program, with enough successful returns to create actual environmental benefits compared to single-use options.
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Saving money 💰 This matters for your wallet and your community. Americans purchase and throw away an astonishing 50 billion single-use cups each year. Most of these end up wasted in landfills. By proving reusable systems can work across an entire city, this project opens the door to programs that could help you avoid wasteful purchases while keeping your neighborhood cleaner.
What made Petaluma's approach different was its focus on making reuse accessible to everyone. Thirty businesses participated, from national chains to local coffee shops, automatically serving every to-go beverage in a reusable cup at no extra cost. This removed the barriers that often limit similar programs.
"The best part was that this project got the whole community involved," said Mayor Kevin McDonnell of the City of Petaluma. "Deep public-private partnerships, including commerce and non-profits collaborating, demonstrated that it is possible to launch an inclusive and accessible reuse system that supported our residents. People got into it, and it was the talk of the town."
The project's success has the NextGen Consortium planning to expand to other cities.
"The Petaluma Reusable Cup Project demonstrated an ambitious, innovative vision of reuse as an everyday reality, paving the way for the Consortium to scale reuse in California and other markets," said Carolina Lobel, Senior Director at the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners.
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