Every year in Switzerland alone, 290 million disposable coffee cups are thrown away, creating an estimated 2,700 tons of waste.
Zurich-based start-up Kooky is looking to combat this problem with the introduction of its reusable disposable cup system. Customers simply buy their coffee in a Kooky cup, available at selected cafés and dispose of them in dedicated bins around the city. The empty cups are collected by e-bike couriers and taken to cleaning centres before they are used again.
After getting their coffee, customers can scan the cup on a mobile app to add it to their account. Once they drop the empty cup off at one of the Kooky bins in Basel or Zurich, their deposit is added back to their account.
The system acknowledges the difficulties in getting consumers to change current habits – for example, bringing a reusable cup with them to a coffee shop. Instead, it presents a circular solution that broadly fits within existing consumer habits.
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