It is a rinse-and-repeat cycle: As soon as prospects end their espresso or tea, they return their mug to a McDonald’s restaurant or designated drop-off level. The mugs are washed and readied for the following buyer.

However there is a catch: Prospects must pay a small deposit, the precise quantity to be decided, for the mug. They’re going to get the cash again as soon as they return the vessel. This system is not obligatory: The eating places collaborating within the pilot program can even proceed to serve drinks in disposable cups.

McDonald's will start testing out a reusable cup program in the United Kingdom next year.
Reusable mugs have been touted as an answer for a tricky environmental problem: Disposable coffee cups. Conventional single-use espresso cups are troublesome to recycle as a result of they’re made with each paper (the cup) and plastic (the inside lining). Paper and plastic should be recycled individually, but it surely’s troublesome to separate the skinny layer of plastic from the paper. Due to that, most recycling services do not settle for the cups, and so they find yourself in landfills or develop into litter.

That is unhealthy for the planet. It is also unhealthy for the pictures of massive firms that wish to sign to prospects that they care in regards to the surroundings.

Companies have just lately ramped up the seek for a greater cup to scale back their environmental influence and enhance their reputations — and to verify they’ve an answer if disposable cups are banned. Final 12 months, the European Parliament approved a law banning some single-use plastic objects, together with straws and cutlery, by 2021.

In 2018, McDonald’s dedicated to discover a extra environmentally pleasant cup as a part of the NextGen Cup problem, which referred to as for concepts and funded prototypes. In the UK, McDonald’s has began to ship recycled cups to particular services that separate the supplies out. And final 12 months, about 30 McDonald’s areas in Germany began utilizing the deposit system to supply reusable mugs.

For the UK pilot, McDonald’s has partnered with Loop, a shopping service that sells items from Häagen-Dazs ice cream to Tide laundry detergent in reusable packages, on the challenge. Loop, which launched as a pilot program last year, might be out there to buyers all through the contiguous United States this fall.

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