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14 million disposable cups are being used in the UK every day, but, if our latest guest has anything to do with it, that figure is going to start tumbling and tumbling.
We are pleased to welcome Safia Qureshi, founder of CupClub, a returnable packaging service for hot and cold drinks. The tailored end-to-end service could reduce single-use plastic packaging by up to 47%, and that’s worth shouting about. Manufactured in the UK, cleaned in the UK, and providing an excellent takeaway cup solution for people in the UK. This is a homegrown solution with worldwide potential.
Let’s get this discussion underway.
Welcome Safia, it’s great to have you here. We are also keen, first of all, to understand your history and what led you to create CupClub?
CupClub was started as a side project, I’m an architect by trade, and started a design agency for large-scale impact products. We noticed that there was a global problem around waste and single-use plastic, so we wanted a convenient solution to future-proof our city.
CupClub actually started as a test project and grew from there into a startup. Since 2015, I’ve been running it full time, though we officially launched in April 2018.
Sustainability and the Circular Economy have really gained a lot of momentum in 2018, why do you think that is?
The momentum is increasing because of the media pushing awareness of the bigger problems to consumers. This is not just mainstream media outlets, but even respected individuals like David Attenborough, with Planet Earth, are now growing the consumer conscience.
Even though ‘big industry’ has been aware of these problems for around 40 years, it’s only recently that through organisations and NGOs have been collaborating to make awareness mainstream. Having succeeded, the awareness has kicked off a bigger development of how brands need to respond, and naturally, that's triggering a lot of commitments and momentum in the space. At the same time, NGOs, Charities, and Media all continue working on awareness.
We get frustrated when we see people with disposable cups. It’s not hard to carry a reusable one. How do you go about communicating that behavioural change in a way that is persuasive, without being confrontational?
Actually, we don’t suggest that people carry anything on them because we don’t think it’s scalable. We provide returnable packaging that people can borrow at the point of sale and return to the nearest drop point.
It’s not convenient to buy, own, and manage a cup of your own, and the statistics prove that. Only between 2-4% of people actually do it. We’ve been ruthless in understanding and using the data. How can we make people adopt and adapt to services that align with their values? What do those services look like? Those are critical things. Ultimately, our service is more convenient because you have no concept of carrying anything, which is the main burden.
Should we carry reusable versions of everything? Plates? Utensils? A whole picnic set? This whole concept needs to be integrated into retail and customer experience and not pushed onto the customer as their responsibility. Customer experience and workplace experience are valuable. Improving products and services to heighten this is key. CupClub provides a service that allows consumers to walk away with a product they can return later which is more convenient than anything else they have access to currently.
You’re a winner of the 2017 Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy Innovation Prize. How did this come about? And how has it benefited CupClub?
We started CupClub in 2015, looking at the EMF Circular Economy methodology of developing new services and systems. It was in its infancy, as they were figuring out how to integrate services in the context of real business. We also looked at the IDEO methodology of building services for people and customer experience.
In 2016, a competition was launched for the New Plastics Economy and as we had spoken twice on this topic, we were on their radar and they knew us as a solution they could get behind.
We won. They were our first investor. This enabled us to build our first product and service and get the prototype out, in order to get the company off to a great start. It gave us a platform for visibility from different NGOs, governments and brands, putting us on the global stage.
Since the beginning, we’ve been working closely with the entire roadmap, developing it, and becoming one of the first companies to launch on a commercial basis, as opposed to just a prototype.
It’s mentioned on your website that you’d like to provide city-wide solutions. Imagine we are the leaders of Cityville, what do you propose to do for our city?
We currently work on a city-by-city scale, with London being our main focus. We operate depending on density and consumption volumes. We would approach any new city with the same rulebook. Closed systems, large HQ offices, universities, airports, campuses where there is high consumption. We would look at the opportunity per city, liaise with NGOs, governments, and stakeholders, and deploy CupClub in the key locations.
The project would be led from two angles, the commercial model and impact model. We’d be looking for a system where we can integrate simply, quickly and in volume. Certain cities would work, certain cities wouldn’t, and that would be determined by size and population.
How do your cups integrate with IoT technology, and do you see a big future for IoT in the circular economy?
Our philosophy is to give every product’s packaging a unique digital ID through RFID, which is a benign technology, so we can track all products across the supply chain. We can gather information such as knowing how many times a product has been used, giving us transparency that we can share with our customers and retailers. RFID technology allows us to optimise our technology so that we know where our products are at all times. This is IoT in action, because it connects physical products to our platform by using unique IDs. That’s the power of what IoT can do; it allows you to manage inventory, to manage and be aware of a product’s lifetime, and manage its case history (how many times it was used, where it was last used, and by whom).
Where would you like to see CupClub in five years’ time?
In five years we plan to be established across a network of global cities and developing new product categories. Right now it’s hot drinks, but there’s a whole roadmap beyond drinks, in order to eliminate single-use plastics. We have proprietary patenting for other product categories too.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to be more conscious of their purchases?
Look for transparency. Look for brands that are trying to do the right thing. Request information when you are purchasing. Be willing to say no to the status quo. Be ready at the point of sale to say no. These are metrics that the supermarkets look at. They will see patterns of high demand. Raise awareness where you can. Support businesses that are trying to impact people and the planet over corporate needs.
Public awareness and information are better now, we just need the confidence to support this movement becoming mainstream.
What advice would you give to other sustainability entrepreneurs who want to start a business or project of their own?
My advice is simple. Build a brand!
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