The music industry has a plastic waste problem. Can this “ugly” cup solve it?

Sweep the grounds after any given concert or music festival and one thing you're almost certain to see is a scattering of empty plastic cups. According to a 2024 report by environmental advocacy agency Upstream, the live events industry generates more than 4 billion disposable cups that end up in landfills each year in North America alone.

It doesn't have to be that way — and reuse company r.World wants to lead the change. The Minneapolis-based company provides reusable serving utensils – cups, food containers and more – for mass gatherings, with these products designed to alleviate the persistent problem of single-use plastic waste in the live music industry and beyond.

“Besides the reduction [carbon emissions from] fan travel, reuse is the number one thing venues can do to reduce environmental impact,” r.World founder Michael Martin says. “Both artists and fans are asking for it.”

Founded in 2017, r.World provides reusable plastic cups and other tableware to more than 200 venues across the US, including festivals such as Long Beach's 20,000-capacity Cali Vibes and San Francisco's 30,000-capacity Portola. In late May, the company partnered with Los Angeles' Crypto.com Arena, home of the NBA's Lakers and Clippers, and the Peacock Theater to launch a full-time reusable cup program at each venue.

However, the mission extends far beyond concerts and sports, with r.World aiming to build the infrastructure for a national reuse economy that will expand into airlines, consumer packaged goods, restaurants and more, eventually become “a single national solution,” Martin says. “The music industry has essentially started and is leading the reuse movement in the country, and it's inspiring universities, corporate campuses, quick service restaurants and more.”

At the center of this movement is the plastic cup itself. Good for 300 uses, the r.Cups are made from thick plastic designed and manufactured to r.World specifications that Martin says have “revised” the manufacturing process of a standard disposable cup. Made in the United States to minimize carbon emissions from shipping, each cup is slapped with the words “please return our cup to an r.cup bin” and when a cup reaches its maximum number of uses, it is recycled into another r.World products.

The sweeping project began 10 years ago, when Martin's other firm, climate solutions-focused Effects Partners, was hired to analyze operations at Live Nation and create a sustainability strategy. While drawing up a five-year plan for the live event behemoth, Martin realized that “recycling and composting efforts at the venues never worked,” since most of it ended up in landfills. The realization made him “depressed, for about six months”, until he thought of the reuse schemes he had seen in European spaces – and then developed r.World.

Through his connections with U2, Martin suggested the band try using it again on the 2017 tour. It was a success, and r.World was soon working with 13 acts, including the Rolling Stones, Dave Matthews Band, Bon Jovi, Radiohead and Maggie Rogers, who gave Martin permission to go to venues on their behalf and ask the venue to try again during their show.

The first r.Cups were branded with band logos, until the team realized that fans were just keeping them as souvenirs. In 2019, the model morphed into “an ugly cup” people were less willing to take home.

Cups are collected in yellow bins located next to litter bins and recycling bins at venues, and then taken to a globally owned washing centre. These hubs are built in economically depressed areas of any given city to help stimulate the economy and are where the cups are washed and inspected, staffed largely by people living in halfway houses or getting back on their feet after getting out. from prison.

These local facilities are vital because, as Martin says, “you can't prioritize the environment if you're shipping cups long distances across the country” because of the carbon emissions created by such transport. r.World plans to build wash hubs and reuse solutions in the top 20-30 US markets, having already launched in seven. The company expects to add one or two more cities in the coming months and is in talks with officials from nearly every city it's targeting. “We know there's a demand and a need,” says Martin. While the majority of r.World's current business is cups, Martin reports “exploding” demand for food containers at venues, festivals, schools and corporate campuses.

r.Cup typically starts at a venue after an installer or concessionaire reaches out to inquire about reuse. (Martin notes that they have a 99% customer retention rate, and the only venue that left the program had financial problems.) With an operational design developed through focus groups with national franchisees such as Levy Restaurants, Aramark and Sodexo US, r.World provides everything from collection cups and bins to signage, employee training materials and social media content to educate visitors, offering “a complete turnkey solution so it's unpredictable for operators,” says Martin. Venues are also provided with environmental impact reports that use EPA guidelines to account for everything from sourcing and shipping the cups to the temperature of the water used to clean them. (Martin says the company is “kind of obsessive” about these protocols, which he attributes to “being a numbers guy.)

Implementation costs are based on the number of single-use items required by a venue and vary depending on how much of its service is packaged beverages versus draft or fountain beverages. Martin says that larger arenas that serve draft and fountain drinks go through 1.5 million-2.5 million disposable cups annually. While the initial cost of r.World products is higher than a single use, the cost over time is generally less since venues must continue to purchase the reusable plastic cups that are thrown away after each event.

Some venues build this additional cost into the price of the drink, while others allow guests to opt out and receive a single-use cup at a slightly lower cost. (Across r.World's millions of transactions, Martin has heard of “two or three” people opting out.) Drink servers are also on r.Cup, he says, “because they felt bad giving away all that disposable waste and cups are a conversation starter with guests.” Beyond the price differences, Martin says the biggest hesitation for venues and events to adopt reusable cups is an “imagination gap”, along with other factors such as existing supplier contracts, venue infrastructure and apathy and misinformation, such as thinking disposable aluminum or compostable cups are good for the environment.

Really, reusable cups are an alternative to the commonly used compostable cups, which have a dismal composting history and behave like a regular single-use plastic cup if they end up in a landfill. Aluminum cups and bottles also often end up in landfills, since sorting recycling at events can be erratic. A 2023 Upstream report states that “single-use aluminum cups are the worst climate choice by far,” as they use 47% more energy during their life cycle and create 86% more carbon dioxide than other single-use plastic options.

As sustainability initiatives become more common and more demanding across the industry and culture at large, more than 150 national reuse companies have been launched since the pandemic. In 2022, Live Nation invested in Turn Systems, a program that provides reusable cups, collection bins and mobile wash systems to venues and festivals. As such, r.World works with Live Nation competitors, including AEG, ASM and NIVA, and provides product washing for other reuse companies.

Beyond venues and events, r.World's clients include the Coca-Cola Company, widely cited as one of the world's leading producers of single-use plastic waste. Coca-Cola has committed to incorporating 25% reusable products by 2030 and is working with r.World to provide reuse services for Coca-Cola customers such as music venues, cinemas, the Olympics, the World Cup and wherever Coca-Cola -Cola wants to implement reuse. r.World has also been selected by the EPA and the White House Council on Environmental Quality to help raise national awareness of reuse.

Martin says that while an industry has developed to help solve the problem of single-use plastics, many waste management and consumer packaged goods companies would rather not see a large-scale shift to reuse. And despite the explosive growth in the sector, Martin says r.World's biggest competitors are still disposable cups and tableware, whether plastic, compostable or aluminium.

This is where artists and fans can show their power by asking for reuse programs on their riders and spending money on venues with reuse programs given, Martin says, that “businesses will give back what consumers are asking for.”