The takeaway-system of the future?

– In Aarhus, we had a growing waste problem. When we started looking for a solution to this, we discovered that 48 percent of our waste was takeaway packaging, says Simon Rossau, project manager for Circular Packaging Systems in Aarhus Municipality.

Eleven different companies submitted bids to carry out a pilot project in collaboration with the municipality, and in the end, it was the Norwegian company Tomra that won. The company shares the municipality's vision for the city and presented the best reuse solution, says Rossau.

A new type of deposit system

With partial funding from The Norwegian Retailer's Fund, Aarhus municipality and Tomra brought on several companies that provide takeaway food and drinks, and in January 2024, they launched an entirely new system for reusable packaging in Aarhus.

René Jørgensen, site manager at Tomra, explains the deposit system like this:

– When you buy a coffee in a reusable cup from one of our partners, you pay a five kroner deposit. When you're finished drinking your coffee, you can scan a QR code to see a map of our deposit machines. You then place the cup in the machine and scan your card to get the five kroner back.

The next step in the cycle is that a Tomra employee arrives to empty the machine and take the cups to the cleaning facility, Jørgensen explains.

– There, we wash the cups and conduct bacterial tests, before repackaging them and delivering them back to our partners. And then the cycle continues.

See the deposit system in practice here:

Exceeding All Expectations

Since the project's inception, Tomra has distributed over 600,000 reusable cups, reducing the amount of plastic packaging sent for incineration by ten tons.

– There’s no doubt that we’re reducing the amount of waste in our city through this project, says Rossau.

He refers to the nearly 100,000 cups that Aarhus Municipality cleaned out of the river last year. This year, they’ve only found one of their reusable cups among the waste. Rossau says that the results, as well as feedback from both consumers and partners, have exceeded all expectations.

– People appreciate that Aarhus is doing something different, he says.

Aarhus Street Food has been the main partner for the project, and bar manager Stephen Harris claims the response has been 99.9 percent positive.

– The customers are extremely happy. They don’t see the deposit system as a hindrance; both staff and customers feel they’re doing something good and contributing to the green transition.

Huge potential

Project manager Rossau believes that introducing the deposit system to other cities is a "no-brainer".

– In an international context, this project has enormous potential. We are in dialogue with cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo. To put it into perspective, Tokyo has 40,000 coffee shops, while Aarhus only has around 100.

He believes that the threshold for introducing it in Scandinavian cities is lower, as we are already accustomed to deposit systems for plastic bottles. In Norway, over 90 percent of bottles sold are returned for recycling.

– We use far, far too many packaging products, and we can easily reduce that by using the system we’ve built here in Aarhus, Rossau concludes.