Glasgow. Scotland’s most populous city. Birthplace of arguably Britain’s greatest ever football manager (Sir Alex Ferguson). And now birthplace of a reuse revolution.
That’s the hope at least of Hubbub and Reposit, which between them have patiently led the development of the UK’s first city-wide returnable cup scheme. We use the word patiently advisedly since persuading high street giants like Costa, Caffè Nero and Burger King to collaborate over such a scheme must have required levels of deftness and diplomacy that Ferguson, for all his talents, was not exactly famed for.
Borrow Cup, to give the scheme its official title, allows customers at any of the 40-plus participating cafés, including local independents, to buy a drink in a Borrow Cup for a £1 deposit. The cups can be returned to any participating location to refill, swap for another cup or claim back the £1 deposit. Used cups are collected by Reposit in an e-van, professionally washed and then delivered back to stores to be reused over and over again.
The scheme aims to tackle the near 400 million disposable cups that are used in Scotland every year and that in Glasgow make up 30% of the drinks packaging in bins on the street.
Sticking with the circular economy theme, environmental charity WRAP has announced it has joined forces with the International Food Waste Coalition (IFWC) to form WRAP EU. The aim is to transform global food systems, and address unsustainable production and consumption in fashion, textiles and plastics. An initial focus will be on tackling food waste across the hospitality and foodservice sector and along the wider value chain, after which the organisation plans to expand to focus on sustainable fashion and plastic pollution.
From proactive organisations to, ahem, less proactive ones. We speak of the UK Government which has just published its response to the House of Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee’s report ‘Recipe for health: a plan to fix our broken food system’. The Lords report was a punchy piece of work that called for a radical shift in policy making away from the individual and towards businesses that rely on sales of less healthy food and drink.
Although the government acknowledged that reducing obesity rates will require reshaping the food environment, it offered no explicit support for the vast majority of the committee’s recommendations including for mandatory reporting of sales of unhealthy foods, mandatory reformulation targets, taxes on sugar and salt, and the exclusion of food businesses that derive more than a certain proportion of sales from less healthy products from policy discussions.
“We will continue to review the evidence”, was a common refrain throughout the government’s response. A case of ministers keeping their powder dry ahead of the forthcoming food strategy? Or another example of how the ‘growth at all costs’ agenda is acting as a blocker to social and environmental policies?
Certainly, Rachel Reeves’ decision this week to support an expansion in airport capacity, including a third runway at Heathrow, has got campaigners hot under the collar. Newts and bats are also set for a fraught few years after Reeves vowed they wouldn’t get in the way of delivering big infrastructure projects. In response, environmental groups have been at pains to stress how economic growth and nature recovery are not competing agendas. “Good, long term economic growth, thriving nature and net-zero do not have to be at odds, yet some of today’s announcements put our climate targets at risk,” said Beccy Speight, RSPB chief executive.
As the Digest enters ‘Fergie time’ (one for the football aficionados) there’s just time to note that nature is the focus for two of this week’s other news stories: one highlights research showing that nature-based interventions are better at reducing livestock emissions than tech-based solutions, while the other reports on how Waitrose is rolling out new technology that will allow it to gather real-time data on the environmental health of its farms. We also cover calls by a coalition of NGOs for the EU to develop an action plan for plant-based foods.
