2GoCup: A new way to fill your cup at festivals

An innovative company and eco-conscious organisers are making it easy for festival-goers to swap single-use disposable cups for reusable cups

Fri, 12 Jul, 2024 - 02:00

Caroline Hennessy

Take a look at the Irish festival calendar and you’ll see that it’s almost always a good time of the year for a food festival.

Whether based in a town or a field, with a focus on chefs or gardens, they have proliferated in recent years, catering for people of all ages and interests.

One of the things that all these events have in common? Visitors who want coffee, tea, or hot chocolate, to enjoy while walking around, listening, watching and taking in the atmosphere, or to warm their hands as they huddle under an umbrella.

The problem is that all that waste, those single-use disposable cups (SUDCs) mount up rapidly.

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It’s something that Kevin Sheridan decided to tackle at the last Sheridans Food Festival, which took place at their Virginia Road Station Headquarters, Co Meath, in September 2023.

“It really focuses the mind when you see the sheer volume of disposable cups and glasses at the end of an event like our festival,” he says, “Literally thousands.”

He and the team had been looking at alternative ways to increase recycling and reduce waste and the event: “We thought about different ways to do this including the idea of buying a huge volume of ceramic mugs.”

Then they came across Irish company 2GoCup. It’s based on a reusable polypropylene cup that works on a simple €2 deposit and return basis, meaning customers can effectively rent a cup for the day and return it, collecting the €2 deposit when finished.

“Coffee and tea cups were the big issue,” Sheridan notes.

“But we also had to deal with beer and other drinks. We came across the 2GoCups at another event where they were being used for beer. So we got in touch and put the system in place for the festival. We got 2GoCups for the beer and drinks stalls.”

Challenge to recycle

A 2018 Repak study estimated that we used more than 200m SUDCs in Ireland yearly. At that time, the consumption of these cups was projected to grow to more than 300m per year by 2025.

Even at 2018 levels, that works out at a staggering 22,000 SUDCs being used every hour. We can see the evidence: They’re crammed into bins at festivals and in our cities, thrown out of cars, left behind at the seaside — frequently appearing in the top 10 items found during beach clean-ups — and disposed of through incineration or landfill.

According to the 2022 regulatory impact analysis on SUDCs conducted by the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, most of these cups are made from paper lined with either polyethylene plastic or polylactide, a vegetable starch.

Because plastic and cardboard are so closely integrated into the polyethylene version, they are what the report calls “challenging” to recycle: We don’t currently have the facilities for recycling them in Ireland.

While compostable cups — the ones with a polylactide lining — are perceived as a better option, they cannot be composted at home and must be sent to an industrial composting facility. Any benefits are wasted if they end up in a regular bin.

Irrespective of what they are made from, the idea that you would throw away a cup after only one use is simply an incredibly inefficient use of limited resources.

Enter the reusable cup. Along with the deposit-and-return 2GoCup, there’s a wide variety of options on the market, from pricey stainless steel to ceramic travel cups and lightweight plastic. You probably have some stashed in your own cupboard, or if you’re more organised, in your car, ready to bring into your favourite coffee shop.

But, as Kevin Murphy, founder and CEO of 2GoCup, points out, while many own a reusable cup, far fewer use it.

His company makes it easy: you can pick up a 2GoCup at your local café - or use it in a festival environment - for a €2 deposit, returning it to any of 600 participating locations to get a refund. While still made of polypropylene plastic, the cup is manufactured in Ireland, has a projected lifespan of 1,000 uses and can go into your recycling bin when it reaches the end of its life.

The Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications report estimated that polypropylene cups would only have to be re-used between 20 and 45 times to justify their use over a disposable alternative.

That report was commissioned before the landmark 2022 Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, in which phasing out disposable coffee cups was a priority.

At that stage, a charge, quickly nicknamed the latte levy, was due to be introduced on SUDCs in late 2022. We’re still waiting, but Murphy says a 20c charge is ready to be implemented: “As far as we’re told, the levy is coming in during the next six months.”

Rather than wait for what seems inevitable, some events, like Sheridans Food Festival, are already making it easier for consumers to do the right thing by encouraging them to bring their own eco-friendly options and offering 2GoCups on-site.

“It’s a brand new space,” says Murphy about bringing his company’s reusable cups to festivals.

“We’ve worked with Waterford Festival of Food, Savour Kilkenny, Sheridans Food Festival and Bord Bia Bloom so far. A lot of these businesses are coming to us looking for a proper solution and we’re agile enough to find a formula that works for them. It’s been a really interesting area to explore. It can have a massive impact right away if organisers can offer a single-use free opportunity at their event.”

In terms of festivals, the concept is simple, Murphy says: “How it worked at Bloom is that when I enter the festival, I pay €2 for a cup that’s widely available at the entrance. I can go about enjoying my day, get some great coffee and then, on exit, I can return the cup and get my €2 back. And that’s as easy as it gets. Even if you’re not environmentally interested, it’s hard to argue with, especially when there’s a discount for your drink.”

The scheme was promoted at Bloom via social media and on the sustainable section of the website.

More than 100,000 people attended the festival in Phoenix Park over the June bank holiday weekend and, according to Annemarie Crowe of Bord Bia, “around 10% of attendees availed of the 2GoCup scheme or brought their own reusable cup to Bloom”.

Festivals take notice

For Martha Macklin, administrator at April’s Waterford Festival of Food based in Dungarvan, working with 2GoCup came out of the festival’s efforts to become more sustainable. The festival had banned single-use plastic bottles from market stalls and introduced reusable bar cups, so this was the next logical step.

“We heard through the media,” says Macklin, “that Killarney had launched its single-use cup-free initiative throughout the town in conjunction with 2GoCup. That cemented our belief that it could be done at our festival.”

Last July, the Kerry tourist destination became the first town in Ireland to phase out SUDCs, working with more than 50 local businesses to implement a reusable cup system.

After some research in Killarney and consultations with the relevant stall holders, the festival brought 2GoCup on board.

“We had a stock of cups in our festival HQ for people to pay a deposit, take their cup and purchase their coffee,” Macklin notes. “Unfortunately, not everybody was aware of our 2CoCup initiative, and those already in a queue for coffee were not willing to leave the queue to pick up a cup, which meant that there were still many single-use cups still issued.”

For the 2025 Waterford Festival of Food, there will still be a focus on reusables, but, Macklin says: “We need to make it easier and more convenient for both stallholders and customers. We found that while most customers are very happy to see environmentally friendly initiatives in use, it needs to be easy for them to pick up a cup. Stallholders are also more than happy to do away with single-use cups but only if it doesn’t cause any delay to them or their customers.”

At the Sheridans Food Festival, “it took a little bit of organising to have the cup stations and refund stations in place but it really worked very well,” says Sheridan. “We got lots of comments about how people much preferred the reusable cups and many people opted to hold on to their cup [to use elsewhere] rather than get a refund.”

Sheridan was so happy with the impact of the 2GoCups—“there were literally no cups in the bins”—that he decided to use them at the Sheridans HQ café in Co Meath.

It’s a slow process, changing the culture around takeaway coffee, but festival organisers deciding to move away from short-term convenience for the sake of bigger, broader environmental and sustainability goals is a positive thing that can have an impact long after the event.