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Bold Initiative
For three months in 2024, 30 restaurants in the City of Petaluma, CA, swapped their single-use cups for to-go reusable cups that could be returned anywhere in town via a network of over 60 local return bins. With no deposits, penalties or sign-up required, the system was designed to be more accessible and inclusive than existing reuse models, which often come with high financial or geographical barriers to participation.
Unprecedented Partnership
Led by the NextGen Consortium, which is managed by Closed Loop Partners’ Center for the Circular Economy, the Petaluma Reusable Cup Project is a bold initiative to drive reuse and displace hundreds of thousands of single-use cups. The project is the result of extensive collaboration between the NextGen Consortium, the City of Petaluma, national brands, local businesses, NGOs and operational partners.
Major Milestone
This first-in-the-nation program achieved a major milestone with returns of the reusable purple cups that exceeded the environmental break-even point — meaning that enough of the program’s purple cups were successfully returned for the reuse system to produce environmental benefits when compared with a single-use alternative.
