Six million cups. That’s how many single-use plastic cups are thrown away each season at Emirates Stadium in London. Cleaning up and disposing of plastic waste can be one of the largest costs big venues have to deal with — however, Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, along with a number of other stadiums, are turning to one solution: reusable cups.
For the 2019/20 football season, Emirates Stadium introduced a reusable cup system in partnership with a local brewery. Under the initiative, fans at the stadium receive their beer in reusable cups, as opposed to single-use plastic or compostable options. What was the result? Plastic-waste is down and fan experience is resoundingly up, according to the stadium’s deputy manager, Michael Lloyd.
“The reaction from our fans towards this scheme has been overwhelmingly positive and their support has played a huge part in helping us to reach this milestone,” said Lloyd.
Blundstone Arena in Australia, with over 300,000 annual attendees, recently implemented a reusable cup system through a partnership with Globelet — a leader in the commercial reusable cup market.
“Implementing this reusable cup system saved us 60% on our cleaning bill, our fans loved the concept and we raised money for our charity partner. It was really a win-win,” according to Blundstone general manager, Stephen McMullan.
While some stadiums simply offer reusable cups to game-goers to take home (for instance the Super Bowl in 2020), Blundstone Arena partnered with Globelet to not only provide reusable cups, but also wash them afterwards for future reuse.
Europe and Australasia have adopted cost-saving reusable systems with great success. Will the U.S. hop on the bandwagon soon too?
