People are paid to return coffee cups in this Danish city - does it work?

I slide the thick white plastic cup with its blue lid into the hole, and continue to follow the instructions written on the deposit machine.

Placing my credit card on the designated card area, a tingle tells me that in a few moments, around five Danish crowns (7 cents) will be returned to my bank account.

In January 2023, the Danish city of Aarhus launched a three-year trial project to curb the number of disposable coffee cups. Instead of chucking them away, locals can use deposit machines designed by Norwegian waste management company TOMRA.

"Through waste analysis, we discovered that 45 per cent of waste in Aarhus came from takeaway packaging,” says Simon Smedegaard Rossau, project manager for circular packaging at Aarhus Municipality. “This finding was a turning point."

One year on, Aarhus is now able to share its first results, in the hope more cities will follow suit.

Many European countries such as Romania, Denmark, and Belgium have introduced deposit systems that enable people to return plastic or glass bottles and cans to designated machines in supermarket chains, where they are rewarded with a small refund in return.

The Aarhus system is open air however, with machines located in the main shopping streets. 

The aim is to recycle very popular products such as cold or hot beverage cups that are used for an average of just 15 minutes before going to waste. “Only less than 2 per cent of single use plastic coffee cups are recycled worldwide,” says Rossau.

The pilot did not only require building machines, deciding where to place them and creating the recyclable cups. Changing consumer behaviours was a necessary step to make the ‘reuse revolution’ happen. 

"Plastic convenience has been optimised for decades, and that’s a strong