This Danish city is paying people to return reusable coffee cups, over 750,000 cups already returned

Aarhus, Denmark, is leading the way in recycling reusable coffee cups with a three-year pilot program launched in 2024.

The initiative encourages customers to return their reusable coffee cups at automated deposit machines throughout the city.

Participants receive a €0.70 rebate, credited directly to their debit cards.

Once collected, the cups are sent to a TOMRA facility, inspected for damage, cleaned, and redistributed to participating cafes for reuse.

Since the reusable coffee cups recycling program was launched, residents have returned more than 750,000 reusable coffee cups, significantly cutting down on waste in the city.

In return, participants have received a total of €514,000 in rebates, motivating even more people to join.

By returning their cups to designated drop-off points, consumers not only earn a small cash reward but also play a role in creating a more sustainable system for managing waste.

“Through waste analysis, we discovered that 45 percent of waste in Aarhus came from takeaway packaging,” Simon Smedegaard Rossau, project manager for circular packaging at Aarhus Municipality, told Euronews. “This finding was a turning point.”

After a year in action, Aarhus is sharing its results, hoping to inspire other cities to follow its lead, believing the program’s success could encourage more communities to adopt similar recycling efforts and reduce waste on a larger scale.

Aarhus’s unique reusable coffee cups system

Across Europe, countries like Romania, Denmark, and Belgium have rolled out deposit systems, allowing people to return plastic and glass bottles or cans to supermarket machines for a small refund.

However, in Aarhus, the city has taken a unique approach to coffee cup recycling by placing collection machines in open-air shopping areas, making it easier for people to return their used cups.

The aim is to recycle everyday items like coffee cups, often discarded after a short use.

“Less than 2 percent of single-use plastic coffee cups are recycled worldwide,” said Rossau.

The program’s success didn’t just depend on installing machines or designing recyclable cups—it also required changing people’s habits. Encouraging consumers to embrace reuse was key to the initiative’s impact.

“Plastic convenience has been optimized for decades, and that’s a strong force influencing consumer behavior. If the consumer has a choice between single-use plastics and reusable ones, the adoption rate would be low,” says Geir Saether, head of TOMRA Reuse.

Convincing the Aarhus people

To get people on board, the program started by working with 45 cafes that offered reusable cups instead of single-use ones.

However, the initial results were disappointing, with only 25 percent of cups being returned, leaving Rossau uncertain about the program’s future.

For the system to work, reusable cups need to be returned at least six times, reaching a return rate of 82 percent.

Things took a turn during Aarhus Uke, the city’s week-long festival in September when vendors used only reusable cups.

This increased exposure helped spread the word, and around 100,000 cups were returned—about the amount that would fill 1,200 trash bins.

Rossau said the event was a key moment for shifting behavior, as it introduced many people to coffee cup recycling.

Since the event, Rossau has observed an apparent change in how people are recycling.

Many now bring bags full of cups, recycling them in bulk, similar to how they would with cans and bottles.

As a result, the return rate has increased to 88 percent, with each cup being reused about 44 times on average.

The success of Aarhus coffee cup recycling

The pilot program aimed to collect 500,000 cups in its first year but exceeded expectations by returning 735,000 cups, preventing 14 tons of plastic waste and CO2 emissions.

The goal is to collect 1.5 million cups in 2025 and another 1.5 million the following year.

Aarhus Municipality plans to expand the program to nearby cities and possibly include other types of food packaging.

The initiative has gained national support, with funding from Denmark’s financial plan to create a national partnership involving municipalities, businesses, and other stakeholders.

If the project is rolled out nationwide, it could help reduce the 500 million single-use takeaway items used annually in Denmark.

While Aarhus is a mid-sized city, adapting the program to larger cities with more complex systems will bring challenges and new growth opportunities.

Here’s a quick video about Aarhus’s coffee cup recycling system via Tomra: