In forty years in technology I have learned that the hard part is rarely the thing everyone is looking at. With reuse, everyone looks at the cup.

Putting a drink in a reusable cup is easy. Getting that cup back, again and again, is what determines whether a scheme actually works.

Whether you are considering reusable cup hire for an event or building a permanent reusable cup system for a venue, swapping disposable cups for reusable ones does not guarantee success. The environment, the customer journey, the incentives, the technology and the operating model all matter.

At re-universe we consistently achieve return rates of 95%+ across our schemes. Here are ten of the biggest lessons we have learned about making reuse work.

1. Running reusable and single-use cups side by side

One of the easiest ways to undermine a reusable cup scheme is to make it optional.

If customers are offered a familiar disposable cup alongside a reusable alternative that requires a deposit or a different return behaviour, many will take the path of least resistance.

It also makes operations harder. Staff have two processes to manage, communications become more complicated, and customers have another decision to make at the point of sale.

Where the environment allows it, our preference is simple: make reuse the default.

2. Starting your reusable cup scheme in the wrong environment

Closed-loop environments are generally the easiest places to introduce reuse.

Stadiums, workplaces, universities, visitor attractions and certain events give operators greater control over customer journeys, communications and where return points sit.

Open environments can still support successful reuse, but there are more variables to manage. The mistake is assuming a system that works in one environment can simply be transplanted into another.

Start with the environment and the customer journey, then design the system around them.

3. Making reusable cup returns difficult

Single-use has one enormous advantage: it is incredibly easy. When someone finishes their drink they find a bin and they are done. A reusable cup return scheme has to compete with that behaviour.

Customers need to know exactly what to do when they have finished. Return points should be visible, convenient and positioned where people naturally move. Communication needs to be clear throughout the journey, from the point of sale to the moment someone wants to hand the cup back.

A useful test is simple: is returning the cup almost as easy as throwing one away?

4. Requiring customers to download an app or create an account

For most customers the reusable cup is not the reason they are there. They want a drink.

Requiring someone to download an app, create an account or hand over personal information introduces friction into what should be a simple transaction.

Where possible, reuse should work with something people already have. At re-universe our card-linked approach means customers can take part using a debit or credit card, with no app and no account.

The fewer steps involved, the easier reuse is to adopt.

5. Getting your reusable cup deposit wrong

Deposits work. Get the amount wrong and they work against you.

Set it too low and there is little reason to bring the cup back. Set it too high and you have put a barrier in front of someone who only wanted a coffee.

Our schemes currently sit at £2 at Blenheim Palace and £2.50 at the Eden Project. That is not arbitrary - it reflects roughly what the cup itself costs. Both venues use a well-made cup, and the deposit has to bear some relationship to the value of the thing you are lending. With a cheaper cup I would expect the deposit to come down. In practice the level is the partner’s decision, and it should be.

Nor does it need to stay fixed. One of our partners ran a sustainability event where the previous year had seen a lot of cups disappear, so the deposit was temporarily raised to £5. I have come to accept the irony that sustainability events are among the worst offenders for things going missing.

The system should let operators move the incentive to suit the occasion.

6. Making refunds slow or return periods too long

If customers return their cup, they should get their money back quickly.

I bought two coffees at a well-known cafe in Borough Market this summer and waited five days to see my £10 deposit again. For a family, that is significant money sitting somewhere else for the best part of a week.

With the right infrastructure, refunds happen in seconds.

The return window matters too. Thirty days sounds generous, but a cup sitting in someone’s kitchen is a cup you cannot use. Leave enough of them out there and you have to buy more stock simply to stand still.

I have not seen a scheme where this improves with time. The longer a cup is away, the less likely it is to come back at all.

The objective is not to get the cup back eventually. It is to get it back quickly enough to keep it circulating.

7. Designing reusable cups people want to keep

This one we learned the hard way. Make a cup too desirable and you have designed a souvenir.

At an early deployment our cup carried the venue’s colours and logo. It looked good - good enough that a lot of them left with visitors and did not come back. We have since moved to a more neutral cup, and the difference has been significant.

The same thing happens with cups made for a particular festival, concert or tournament. They become keepsakes, and they are harder to put back into circulation the following year.

You can see where they end up. Branded reusable cups from all sorts of schemes are openly for sale on resale sites.

A reusable cup earns its environmental benefit by being used again. One that is admired once and then lives in a kitchen cupboard has not achieved anything.

Branding is not the problem in itself. The question is what the design encourages people to do.

Design the cup to come back, not to be kept.

8. Choosing between QR codes and RFID without considering scale

QR codes can work well for reusable cup schemes, particularly at a smaller scale. As schemes grow and become more operationally complex, their limitations become more significant.

Individual QR codes generally need to be presented and scanned one at a time. Visible static codes can also be photographed or reproduced, so the wider system needs proper validation to confirm a genuine physical return has taken place.

RFID offers different capabilities. Multiple cups can be identified simultaneously, they can be read without direct line of sight, and tracking can be built into high-volume operational processes. If cups accidentally end up inside a waste bag, RFID can potentially identify them without staff emptying the bag and inspecting every item (and we know of some venues where staff check every single waste bag manually for disposable cups wrongly thrown away).

There is no single identification technology that is right for every scheme. What matters is choosing one that supports the volume, speed, fraud controls and operational visibility you need.

9. Adding friction at the point of sale

A reusable cup system can work perfectly well technically and still create a commercial problem if it slows down service.

Some schemes use a two-tap process. The customer pays for their drink, then completes another card interaction for the cup.

That works in some environments. At a stadium during half-time, or an arena between performances, even small additions to transaction time affect queues, throughput and crucially - revenue for the venue.

Where possible, integrating reuse into the existing point-of-sale transaction removes that extra step. The higher the transaction volume, the more it matters.

10. Treating a reusable cup scheme as a cup purchase rather than a system

Buying reusable cups is the easy part.

Before launch, operators need to understand how cups will come back, where they will be washed, how quickly they can re-enter circulation, how much stock is needed at peak, and what happens when cups disappear or end up in the waste stream.

Staff training and communication matter too. Everyone involved needs to understand the scheme and explain it consistently.

Measurement then closes the loop. Knowing you bought 50,000 cups tells you very little. You need to understand return rates, losses and circulation so you can find problems and improve.

Reuse should be designed as an operating system, not a packaging purchase.

Making reusable cup schemes work

There is no single model that works everywhere. A café, a university, an airport and a 60,000-seat stadium have very different requirements.

But the principles behind successful reuse are remarkably consistent. Make reuse the default. Make returns obvious. Do not demand an app or an account. Set deposits at the right level and return people’s money quickly. Keep cups circulating. Choose technology that matches your scale. And make sure none of it gets in the way of the reason the customer came in the first place.

That is the thinking behind the re-universe platform.

We use RFID to identify and track reusable items at scale, alongside card-linked technology so customers need no app and no account. Deposits can be adapted to different environments and returned in seconds.

Because different venues have different requirements, we support three deployment models: two-tap, where the reuse transaction sits alongside the existing payment journey; integrated, where reuse is built into the point-of-sale transaction; and invisible, where the environment allows us to remove the additional customer interaction altogether, so reuse happens without adding another step to the customer journey.

The technology should largely disappear from the customer’s experience. They get their drink. They know where to return the cup. They get their deposit back quickly.

Behind the scenes, the operator can see whether cups are coming back, how they are circulating and where they are being lost.

After forty years of watching technology arrive and depart, I have a simple test for whether any of it is working. With reuse, the test is this: the cup comes back, and then it gets used again.

Planning a reusable cup scheme?

re-universe provides the technology and infrastructure to operate reuse at scale - from deposits and instant refunds to item tracking, returns and reporting.

Talk to us about your reuse scheme →