Our Reusable Cup Scheme Trial
We're trialling a new reusable coffee cup scheme designed to reduce single-use cups across Imperial.
In reducing single-use packaging, you can reduce your carbon footprint and save your pennies at the same time! Our disposable cup levy is 30p, meaning that if you get a coffee every day that our cafés are open, using reusable cups will save you more than £70 in disposable cup levy costs per year.
Before we expand the scheme across our campuses, we're conducting a six-month trial at The Roastery. During this time, there will be no single-use cups available at The Roastery, you will be only able to use a drink-in china cup, your own reusable cup or one of our Re-Universe reusable cups.
If our trial is successful, we will look to roll it out across more outlets and look in to a similar system for food containers as well as coffee cups. If you have any feedback or questions throughout the trial, please direct them to tasteimperial@imperial.ac.uk.
How it works:
Step 1: Buy your coffee and you'll pay a £2 deposit on your reusable cup
Step 2: Enjoy your coffee (as well as the money and paper you've saved!)
Step 3: Return your cup to a collection point and tap your bank card
Step 4: Your deposit will be refunded to your payment card in moments
Please note, you have a seven-day window to return your cup to a collection point, or it will be marked as not returned.
FAQs
- Who are Re-Universe?
- What are the benefits of a reusable cup scheme?
- Why are you only doing this in one outlet?
- Why are these trial cups Mastercard branded? Has Imperial entered into a relationship with Mastercard?
- How do I return my cup?
- What if I don't return my cup?
- What if I don't get my deposit back after I have returned my cup?
- How do I know my cup is clean?
- What if I don't want to use the system?
- How do I feed back about the trial?
Re-Universe is a company that specialises in circular economy setups. They've worked with organisations including Blenheim Palace, The Wimbledon Championships and the Eden Project to create circular reusable cup systems and eliminate disposable cups. You can find out more about them and their work here.
Reducing single-use cups represents a signifiant saving in CO2 emissions and waste for Taste Imperial, and is a key part of our Sustainable Food and Drink Policy. The Roastery alone issues around 55,000 disposable cups a year. According to the stats Re-Universe have supplied us on the CO2e savings of their cups versus plastic-lined paper disposable cups, eliminating all of these could save us more than 2 metric tonnes of CO2e in a year.
For our customers, using reusable cups can save up to £70 per year, as you will not need to pay our disposable cup levy - this is the same whether you use our reusable cup scheme or bring your own!
It will also reduce your own personal carbon footprint - for individuals, your food and drink eating and buying habits often represent the largest portion of your CO2e, usually even more than travel!
We understand that to make sure that people actually engage with any reusable cup scheme, it must be easy to understand and seamless to use for our customers. We're using this six-month, single-outlet trial to streamline our operations and our communications, and to test whether this specific system works in our outlets and for our customers.
No, Imperial has not entered into an agreement with mastercard. Mastercard has a relationship with Re-Universe, who are providing the cups on loan as part of the trial period.
Return your cup to our automated collection point, located in The Roastery, and tap your card to receive your deposit back.
If you don't return your cup within 7 days of your deposit, your cup will be marked as unreturned and you will not receive your deposit back.
If you have any issues with your deposit, after 24 hours please contact us at tasteimperial@imperial.ac.uk and we will help to resolve any issues.
We collect used cups daily, then process and clean them ourselves with our standard rigorous food-standard cleaning protocols; they come out cleaner than the keep cup you'd bring from home! The Re-Universe system also comes with a piece of equipment that scans to ensure they're clean before they are re-dispensed, only allowing clean cups to enter back into circulation.
At The Roastery, you are still able to use our drink-in cups or bring your own keep cup. If you don't have a keep cup and don't want to use the reusable cup system, The Library Café and The Bakery Café will still be serving in disposable cups during the trial, both just a few minutes walk away.
If you have any feedback or questions throughout the trial, please direct them to tasteimperial@imperial.ac.uk.