Testing a scalable Deposit Return Scheme to remove single-use plastic cups from clubs and venues in the UK

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The night-life economy contributes 6% to the GDP of the UK economy annually, yet very little has been done to reduce the industry's environmental impacts and improve its unnecessary appetite for waste. On average, 85m people attend live events in the UK annually and this results in over 100 million single-use plastic cups being wasted.ECODISCO has created a Circularity Scheme for venues and clubs to support the reduction of plastic waste in the night-life economy. With the support of IUK, ECODISCO will design and test three different business models: a deposit retention scheme (DRS), levy scheme and network sharing scheme for reusable cups; we will incorporate findings into the final design of the Circularity Scheme.ECODISCO removes all of the effort for venues to transition to reusable cups, which frequently drive them to use single-use plastic cups. ECODISCO will supply, collect, clean and return reusable cups weighted to the capacity of the venue. This overcomes the pain points of storing, cleaning and drying reusable cups in-venue. This project incorporates real-world pilots with an initial 5 Central London venues.As the night-life economy recovers from COVID-19, ECODISCO will be a proponent of building back the industry with a pain-free and low-cost solution to reducing plastic waste. Acting now prevents a 'back to business' attitude that prolongs unsustainable, wasteful behaviours. Based on each venue using 1500 reusable cups per 500 cap venue, per night, we estimate ECODISCO's Circularity Scheme will:1. Avoid up to 3.12 tonnes of plastic waste per London venue annually.2. Save ~1.5 tonnes of carbon per London venue annually.3. Save a venue up to £100,000 in SUP per year.