The Bee Cup
Will the Bee Cup be winging its way to a café near you? The distinctive black and yellow cup can be returned to any participating café. We’re working with the University of Manchester and In Our Nature to bring the Bee Cup to hot drink retailers across the city.
Using returnable cups, rather than throwaway ones, can make a big difference. In the UK, we throw away over 2.5billion single-use cups every year. Researchers estimate that Manchester uses around 300,000 disposable cups every day!
The Bee Cup started in cafés across the university campus. It soon became popular on the Manchester Metropolitan University campus. And cafés on Oxford Road joined the scheme too. The Bee Cup is now in the city centre at Central Library and is ready to spread its wings to more venues in the city.
The University of Manchester’s campaign to sip sustainably created a buzz. There were 10,000 app downloads in the first month. In the first eight months, there were more than 27,000 cup checkouts from 24 locations. There were more than 6,500 active users and a 99.6% cup-return rate. That saved a huge amount of waste from landfill and more than 4,500kg of CO2.
Find out more about the Bee Cup and how you can get involved.