Author: Anu Pousi

Together with Kamupak, Palmia, Unicafe, Paulig Corner & the City of Helsinki we are searching for concrete ways to reduce single-use plastics by piloting a reusable coffee cup deposit system in Helsinki.  

This spring people living in Helsinki will have the opportunity to test reusable coffee cups as the pilot kicks off in 10 coffee houses and restaurants. When buying coffee-to-go, the customers can choose to drink from the reusable coffee cup, called KamuCup, with 1€ deposit. The deposit will be reimbursed to the customer as they return the cup to any of the coffee houses or restaurants taking part in the pilot. 

The reusable cups and the deposit system for them comes from the Finnish startup Kamupak, who already has a similar system for takeaway lunch boxes. “The lunchboxes have been very nicely received among the customers and in some restaurants over 50% of to-go diners have chosen Kamupak over the regular single-use package. We are thrilled to start piloting our system also with new products and partners”, says Iida Miettinen, founder & CEO of Kamupak.

Inspiration for the pilot comes from similar pilots and services around the world. And the background for all this is the European Commission’s decision to ban single-use plastics later this year. A forerunner and inspiration in this is Germany, where reusable takeaway packages will become mandatory in 2023. Restaurants and coffee houses must offer reusable containers for their take-away products from 2023 onwards. For example one of the largest coffee-to-go providers in Germany, Aral, has already taken this step and co-operates with a local startup Recup. So it is time to take similar steps in the Nordics and this is why LOOP wants to accelerate the use of reusable takeaway containers together with Kamupak.

Participants from 40 companies in 5 countries joined in to two LOOP LAB sessions, worked hard, and co-created several ideas for how to build circularity into the e-commerce boom.

LOOP is a Nordic network on a mission to take circular economy from strategy to action. This is why we invited Nordic companies, start-ups and stakeholders to join the workshops.

Together with important industry actors, the LOOP-team offered the participants to explore how to build circularity into their business models. The LOOP team dove into the ideas – chose 6 of them – and refined them together with the participants.

The two part-workshop resulted in new companionships, ideas that we will together keep working on, and a leap forward into circular action.

Because it is time to act. For the planet, the user, and your business.