Can This City Banish Single-Use Coffee Cups?
-->
-->
Support
Membership
Donate
-->
-->
Can This City Banish Single-Use Coffee Cups?
Thanks to “reverse vending machines” and environmentally conscious youth, an effort to reduce plastic waste in Aarhus has taken off.
By:<br>Aishwarya Jagani
August 10, 2026 5 min read
Can This City Banish Single-Use Coffee Cups?
Thanks to “reverse vending machines” and environmentally conscious youth, an effort to reduce plastic waste in Aarhus has taken off.
By:<br>Aishwarya Jagani
August 10, 2026 5 min read
Cities + Towns
Credit: fizer0 / Shutterstock
This story has been co-published by Reasons to be Cheerful and the Outrider Foundation.
If you line up to get coffee at one of Aarhus University’s many cafeterias, you won’t see a stack of disposable cups as you do at most cafes. Instead, if you want your flat white to go, you’ll be asked to pay 5 Danish kronor ($0.76) for a white polypropylene cup with a blue lid, branded with the word “REUSEABLE” in bold blue letters.
You may even see people bringing the same REUSEABLE cup from home to fill with coffee day after day. “They’re very nice cups to have for parties or when friends come over. So I have a lot that I reuse outright. Often I will collect and use them for a while, and then at some point I just return them when I feel like I have too many,” says Emilio Sopprani, a student who has lived in Aarhus for two years.
These cups can be returned to one of over 27 RVMs (reverse vending machines) across the city center, the Royal Danish Library and Aarhus University (AU) campuses, in exchange for pant (a 5-kroner refundable deposit). REUSEABLE cups come in two varieties: the blue and white lidded cup for hot beverages, and a taller, clear cup for iced beverages and beer. They are part of a city-wide pilot project to reduce single-use packaging, launched in 2024 by the municipality of Aarhus and Norwegian packaging company TOMRA.
The cups can be used over and over — or returned to reverse vending machines located all over the city center and university campuses. Courtesy of TOMRA / Municipality of Aarhus<br>“We try to have the price of each [REUSEABLE] cup be similar to the price of the single-use cups, because we see that the market is very cost-driven,” says Anders Laursen, project manager of the REUSEABLE project at Aarhus Municipality.
Single-use packaging is a major contributor to global waste. On average, 820,000 single-use cups are thrown away in a single day in Denmark, accounting for about 40 to 45 percent of all waste produced.
“Takeaway packaging is a growing challenge all over the world,” says Jacob Rognhaug, vice president of public affairs at TOMRA, adding that the company has been exploring reusable takeaway packaging since 2022.
Weighed down by negative news?
Enter your email below to receive our smart, uplifting newsletters.
Or click here to choose exactly which ones you want
Reusable to-go coffee cups aren’t new; nor are urban programs to reduce single-use plastic. Cities including Lisbon; Dubai; Freiburg, Germany; and Petaluma, California, have attempted to ban plastic cups or push reusable to-go cups. But one of the biggest obstacles is the resources needed to collect, sanitize and put the cups or other packaging back into circulation. REUSEABLE has dealt with this problem by making its centralized collection stations accessible all across the city. Eighty-nine percent of these cups were reportedly returned in 2025.
The project came about when Aarhus Kommune (the municipality of Aarhus) was looking for a way to reduce single-use plastic waste in the city, especially around the center. “We spoke to some local baristas who said they really wanted to put a reusable cups system in place, but couldn’t because of the effort and resources involved. They were in the business of selling coffee, not packaging,” says Laursen, adding that this made them realize there was “a bigger potential than we thought.”
Beginning in January 2024, REUSEABLE cups were supplied to cafes, AU campuses and the Royal Danish Library. While cafes in the center offer a choice between disposable or REUSEABLE cups, they are the only and default option at AU’s many cafeterias and at the library.
REUSEABLE cups are the default option at the Royal Danish Library in Aarhus. Credit: EQRoy / Shutterstock<br>“It was very natural for us when we started looking at how many disposable cups we used every day in all our universities,” says Esben Luplau, Head of Food Innovation at Compass Group, the catering company that provides catering to all the cafeterias at AU. “We figured that we have to do something about it. So many cups were being thrown out everyday.”
In addition to the university cafeterias, REUSEABLE cups have also recently been introduced at Student House, a nonprofit cafe, bar and events space for students in Aarhus.
“We switched completely to REUSEABLE cups instead of plastic cups across the House last autumn,” says Emil...