Future Takeaway System

– In Aarhus, we had an increasing waste problem. When we began looking for a solution to this, we discovered that 48 percent of our waste was take-away packaging, says Simon Rossau, project manager for Clean City, engineering and environment in Aarhus municipality.

Eleven different companies submitted bids to carry out a pilot project in collaboration with the municipality, and ultimately it was the Norwegian company Tomra that succeeded. The company shares the city's vision and presented the best reuse solution, Rossau explains.

A new type of deposit system

Eventually, the municipality and Tomra involved more companies that deliver takeaway food and drink to join the initiative, and in January 2024, they launched an entirely new system for the reuse of packaging in Aarhus.

Tomra's operations manager, René Jørgensen, explains the deposit system like this:

– When you buy a coffee in a reusable cup from one of our partners, you pay a deposit of five NOK. When you finish drinking your coffee, you can scan a QR code to see a map of our deposit machines. You then put the cup in the machine and scan your card to get the five NOK back.

The next step in the cycle is a Tomra employee empties the machine and takes the cups to the cleaning facility, Jørgensen explains.

– There, we wash the cups and conduct bacterial tests before repackaging them and delivering them back to our partners. Thus, the cycle continues.

See the deposit system in practice here:

Beyond All Expectations

Since the start of the project, Tomra has distributed over 600,000 reusable cups and reduced the amount of plastic packaging that has gone for incineration by ten tons.

– There is no doubt that we are reducing the amount of waste in our city through this project, says Rossau.

He points to the nearly 100,000 cups Aarhus municipality cleaned up from the river last year. This year, they have only seen one of their reusable cups among the waste. Rosseau says the results, as well as the feedback from both consumers and partners, have surpassed all expectations.

– They appreciate that Aarhus is doing something different, he says.

Aarhus Street Food has been the main partner for the project, and bar manager Stephen Harris claims the response has been 99.9 percent positive.

– Customers are extremely satisfied. They do not see the deposit as an obstacle. Both the staff and customers feel they are doing something good and that they are contributing to the green shift, he explains.

Enormous Potential

Project Manager Rossau believes that implementing the deposit system in other cities is a "no-brainer".

– In an international context, this project has enormous potential. We have dialogues with cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo. To put it in perspective, Tokyo has 40,000 coffee shops, while Aarhus has only around 100.

He believes the threshold for introducing it in Scandinavian cities is lower, as we are already accustomed to deposit solutions when it comes to plastic bottles. In Norway, over 90 percent of the number sold is recycled.

– We use far too many packaging products, and we can easily reduce that by using the system we have built here in Aarhus.