General description of the initiative : Just like the majority of reusable cup schemes in events, the customer pays an extra €1 when buying the first drink. The money that doesn’t get returned to customers (due to unreturned cups) is used to wash the cups and is reinvested to replace any unreturned cups. The model is designed to be cost neutral.

This particular pilot test was proved to be rather easy to run and the entire practice easy to be implemented. Several different important factors played an important role in its enrolment. Above all, reusable cups recently became a staple principle in organising festivals, concerts and any other type of mass events. This implies that the visitors are rather accustomed already to this practice.

Results: 65000 cups were deployed for the Ireland – Scotland match before the test was repeated on 8 February 2020 during the Ireland – Wales match, again a 6 Nations Cup. At the very end of the Ireland – Scotland game, 52360 reusable cups were returned to the washing facility. If these 52360 were replaced with single-use plastic pint cups, they would amount up to 418.88 kg.

In terms of CO2 savings, this pilot test achieved a saving of above 2 tonnes of CO2eq. This saving includes savings by avoiding incineration and manufacturing new single use cups and losses by not incinerating them and the emissions coming from washing.

Furthermore, the key factor that was proven to have driven this pilot forward was the fact that a company which has experience in this particular practice was brought in.