Reuse and Circularity Pilots Taking Off Inside Major Sports, Entertainment Venues | Sustainable Brands

When PepsiCo and Union of European Football Associations
(UEFA) came together to implement circular reuse
systems
for cups and trays at last year’s Champions League Finals in Europe, it
was a promising first step in putting a dent in the immense amount of plastic
waste
produced at major sporting events.

The Champions League Finals, which feature the top two European men’s and
women’s soccer teams in respective matches, are held in massive stadiums with
tens of thousands in attendance. The reuse pilots built on seemingly smaller
projects from the year
prior,
which focused on bottles primarily made of recycled plastic.

More consumer-facing companies are beginning to understand the undeniable
business case for shifting from disposables to
reusables
in various contexts, and food and beverage service is an area with incredible
potential for impact. Earlier this month, a first-of-its-kind, citywide reuse
system
for beverage cups was launched in Petaluma, Calif. — backed by brands
including Starbucks, The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Peet’s
Coffee and Yum! Brands — with a goal of creating an operationally viable
model for scale. In the meantime, these kinds of pilots are becoming
increasingly common at large event venues — as the beverage and entertainment
industries work together to reduce overall waste output during major events.

“The momentum is phenomenal,” Tina
Swanson, Chief Revenue Officer at
R.world — a startup that supplies reusable serveware
and manages the entire cleaning and return process — told Sustainable
Brands® (SB).

R.world’s R.cup system is the
foundation of a partnership with Coca-Cola to trial the product across several
of the beverage giant’s sports properties and
relationships
in North America.

R.cups had already launched in Los Angeles’ Crypto.com
Arena,
and Swanson reported a 98 percent return rate for those using the cups.
While the initial pilot focused only on suite-level use, she says there are
plans to roll out the partnership to all seats in the arena.

Although Coca-Cola did not provide any further detail about the partnership,
Swanson did say the beverage company aims to roll out r.World products “in all
branches of their business.” What remains unclear is if this will expand into
Coca-Cola’s upcoming, marquee sports events: the Paris 2024
Olympics
and FIFA World Cup
26
across the US, Canada and Mexico in 2026.

These pilots can also be a channel for both beverage companies and sports
properties to take another step towards meeting lofty “zero-waste” goals. UEFA
and PepsiCo have a joint goal of reaching “zero waste to landfill” by 2026 at
the Champions League Finals. UEFA Social and Environmental Sustainability
Director Michele Uva
wouldn’t comment when asked about progress toward the 2026 goal, but PepsiCo
told SB that the TURN system eliminated the use of more than 70,000 single-use
plastic cups at the 2023 Men’s Final in Istanbul; and at the Women’s Final
in Eindhoven, Netherlands, a similar program led to a 90 percent return rate
for cups and 60 percent for trays.

The Women’s Final was the first to pilot a returnable packaging program — where
52,000, 40-centiliter cups were available to purchase for a returnable deposit
of €2; and Doritos Nachos were served in returnable trays throughout the
stadium. The Men’s Final deployed 48,000 TURN smart cups, which were scanned at
the collection point and could be sanitized and reused through the company’s
second-use system.

Stateside, an example of a reuse pilot turning into more permanent action is
happening in Portland, Ore. at the city’s Moda Center arena. The
facility’s main tenant, the NBA’s Portland Trail
Blazers, worked with reusable cup supplier Bold
Reuse to implement a similar trial run to Coca-Cola
and r.World’s — starting in the suite and club levels, then expanding across the
arena’s 20,500 seats.

“It created a lot of momentum with reuse in the sports and entertainment space,”
Brittany Saulsbury, the team’s
Sustainability Operations Manager, told SB.

The 2023-2024 season was the first for a full stadium rollout; and the team
reported a 73 percent return rate across 75 events, eliminating the need for
more than 400,000 cups and the infrastructure to dispose of them. The system is
fairly integrated, as used cups are sorted and hauled away for sanitizing
offsite and returned for the next use. The proof of concept has led to other
sports teams — including the National Women’s Soccer League’s Kansas City
Current
— taking note and working to implement their own reuse
systems.

For now, larger sports and entertainment facilities will likely see higher ROI
from reuse systems as they can provide the cups and infrastructure at scale at a
better value. That’s where most of the initial growth is likely to happen in
this space until the systems are refined and efficient enough to make sense for
smaller organizations.