Reusable Drinkware Moves Mainstream in UK Sport & Hospitality
Reusable plastic cup schemes are no longer niche pilots. Football and rugby clubs, major sporting tournaments, cultural venues, pubs and clubs are adopting returnable and washable cup systems at scale, cutting single-use plastic and waste handling costs while improving speed of service. This round-up covers active, ongoing schemes and the impact they’re having across the UK venues, as well as providing guidance on manufacturing, branding and supply of eco-friendly drinksware.
Football Stadiums
Arsenal, Emirates Stadium & Aston Villa, Villa Park
Arsenal’s long-running reusable cup programme covers pints, half-pints and soft drinks across the ground. The club reported roughly half a million single-use cups avoided in the first season, and the scheme has remained in place.
The Emirates model shows how stadium-wide adoption can handle high throughputs on matchdays, with simple return points keeping the system user-friendly. For buyers, it demonstrates a proven approach to stadium cups and reusable beer cups, offering clear potential for custom branded cups with permanent messaging built in, and as more football grounds across the UK adopt a similar scheme, familiarity and usability for match-going fans is only increasing over time.
Image courtesy of Arsenal FC, source: arsenal.com
Villa operates the ONE Planet ONE Chance system on matchdays in partnership with a specialist reuse provider. The project has removed hundreds of thousands of single-use items, with the scheme operational on matchdays and for other events and concerts held at the stadium.
The Villa Park experience underlines how straightforward messaging and venue-wide rollouts can make reusable pint cups and half-pint cups a practical part of matchday operations, with simple signage in the hospitality areas and concourses leading to impressive return rates.
More clubs up and down the football pyramid are beginning to implement similar schemes, so if your local club isn’t taking part, expect to see some changes soon!
Rugby Grounds
Northampton Saints, cinch Stadium and Leicester Tigers, Welford Road
Rugby fans are likely familiar with returnable drinksware for pints and soft drinks being introduced over recent years. For example, Northampton Saints’ EcoCup scheme has been in place for several seasons. Originally needing a small deposit, it recently moved to a cashless process, then to a donation-led return model that supports the Saints Foundation while keeping returns high.
This demonstrates how sporting venues can adapt their schemes over time, listening to user feedback while maintaining return rates, giving fans a simple way to contribute to both environmental and social goals.
Image courtesy of Northampton Saints Foundation, source: northamptonsaintsfoundation.org
Leicester Tigers run a reusable cup system without a deposit, with fans instructed to return cups into dedicated bins around the ground. Each returned cup generates a donation to the Tigers Foundation, with the scheme raising over £36,000 to date.
This approach prioritises speed of service while still encouraging high return levels, and shows how reusable beer cups can support community fundraising as well as sustainability.
International Sporting Events
Paris 2024 Olympics and Wimbledon, The Championships
The Paris Olympics in 2024 was the largest ever sports to replace single-use beverage cups with refillable alternatives, through an official partnership with RE UZ. By combining refill fountains with reusable cups, returnable containers in controlled zones and support for personal bottles, organisers reported a 52 percent reduction in single-use plastic for beverages by weight versus London 2012, and a 70 percent reduction in single-use plastic bottles.
These headline figures highlight the potential of reusable systems to cut waste significantly when planned at scale, proving these models can operate successfully in both small and large venues, making the Olympics a benchmark for other global events.
The Wimbledon All England Club operates a large-scale reusable cup system during The Championships, with rigid plastic cups provided for cold drinks and clear return points located around the grounds, with competitors, staff and attendees all benefitting from reusable and returnable cups.
The wide use of returnable drinks containers aligned with the tournament's ongoing resource efficiency targets, which encourage the recycling and reuse of drinks and food containers, and reducing energy and water consumption with a wide variety of measures across the site.
In 2023, around three-quarters of a million reusable items were washed and returned to service during the two-week tournament. Wimbledon proves that multi-day events with high spectator numbers can integrate reusable drinkware effectively when sufficient on-site logistics and washing capacity is provided.
Image courtesy of Wimbledon, source: wimbledon.com
Arts & Culture
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, STACK-CUP system
Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall operates a venue-wide STACK-CUP system for concerts and cultural events. With an innovative stacking design, these returnable drinks containers are easily stacked and carried around the venue, which hosts a variety of music concerts, comedy shows, workshops and artistic exhibitions throughout the year.
Image courtesy of Glasgow Life, source: glasgowlife.org.uk
In 2024 the deposit system was removed to simplify returns, with bins provided throughout the building to keep recovery rates high. This example illustrates how non-sporting venues can embed reusable cup systems into regular operations, and how deposit-free models can still succeed when supported by clear return infrastructure.
Hospitality & High Street
Borrow Cup, Glasgow (multi-brand city network)
Borrow Cup is the UK’s first multi-brand, city-wide returnable drink container scheme, operating across more than 40 Glasgow outlets including Costa Coffee, Caffè Nero, Burger King and a range of independent bars and cafés. Customers pay a small £1 deposit and can return the cups to any participating site for a refund or voucher.
The system shows how reusable cups can function beyond closed venues, with shared infrastructure enabling broad adoption across high street operators. The scheme saw particular success by putting the customer experience first, by having clean reusable containers available at a number of venues, rather than relying on customers to buy and bring their own reusable cups, as well as offering incentives for return and reuse.
Image courtesy of Hubbub, source: hubbub.org.uk
Fuller’s Pubs and Hotels
Fuller’s Brewery operates over 380 pubs and hotels across the south of England, and has introduced reusable plastic cups across all of its managed pubs and hotels, particularly for sporting events and busy trading periods where glass is unsuitable or undesirable. Using the ‘Green Goblet’ returnable cups will save tens of thousands of single use plastic cups being used for events such as the Six Nations, the Boat Race and football and rugby matchdays.
Early rollouts removed tens of thousands of single-use pint cups, with the scheme scaled across the wider estate as standard practice. This demonstrates how pub groups can embed reusable drinkware into everyday service, reducing waste while maintaining operational efficiency.
What these schemes have in common
Durable drinkswear, dishwasher safe or commercial-wash compatible, able to cycle repeatedly without visual degradation for long lasting results and exceptional sustainability credentials.
Simple return journeys, for example return bins or collection crates at exits or on concourses, or refund points near bars.
Clear fan or customer prompts, including signage, on-cup messaging and point-of-sale prompts.
Flexible incentives, deposits and refunds, micro-donations or voucher schemes incentivise returns, but were sometimes removed or simplified following trials.
Printing and branding on every cup not only enhances brand recognition, but can advise users on return systems, sustainability benefits or return logistics, with QR codes, bar codes or identification numbers.
Operational fit, crates and stackable formats that suit back-of-house flows and off-site washing.
Where Great Central Plastics fits
Great Central Plastics manufactures reusable plastic cups by injection moulding in Northamptonshire, with fully automated, 24/7 production capacity from 22 to 160 tonnes. This supports low and high-volume runs of reusable pint cups, reusable half-pint cups and associated formats.
For venues that require smaller measures, reusable shot cups or custom receptacles can be tooled and supplied to spec within a matter of weeks.
With all design, tooling and manufacturing managed in-house in the UK, Great Central Plastics can provide even greater sustainability savings to your project, by keeping the entire process local.
With the recent addition of in-mould labelling capabilities to our injection moulding factory, Great Central Plastics can seamlessly brand and decorate every reusable container produced, without slowing down production.
Looking to transform the sustainability credentials of your venue, cafe or restaurant chain? Get in touch with the Great Central Plastics team today to be guided through the entire journey, from specification to tooling, moulding, branding and more.
Product options for cup reuse programmes:
Materials: Food-grade thermoplastics selected for repeated washing and mechanical durability. Options include eco-friendly alternatives where appropriate.
Branding and data: In-Mould Labelling (IML) for permanent, abrasion-resistant graphics. This enables custom branded cups, logo cups, printed cups, barcodes and QR codes for deposit schemes, cup tracking and logistics.
Colours and effects: Colour-matched masterbatch to Pantone, plus special effects where required for tiering or anti-counterfeit cues.
Form factors: Stadium cups, plastic pint glasses, half-pints and shots, stackable geometries that optimise crate density.
Compliance and cleaning: Designs suited to commercial dishwashers and repeated sanitising.
Supply: Reusable cups wholesale supply for chains and multi-site operators, with consistent moulding quality at scale.
Benefits of IML (in-mould labelling) of reusable cups:
Durability: IML labels are fused into the wall during moulding, so branding and technical data survive repeated handling and washing.
Presentation: Brand-accurate, high-resolution artwork helps sponsors and F&B teams maintain a premium look without sleeve waste.
Education: Use IML branding to inform the customer on intended return behaviour, or the benefits your returnable drinkswear scheme brings to the venue.
Traceability: Permanent barcodes or QR codes support deposit workflows, cup auditing and analytics.
If you are specifying eco-friendly cups for venues, focus procurement on reusable cups and reusable plastic cups that are dishwasher safe and compatible with washing partners. For events, consider reusable stadium cups, festival cups and event cups rather than single-use formats. If your search extends to recyclable cups or recycled plastic cups, request verified material specifications and wash-cycle performance.
Where you are comparing against compostable cups, biodegradable cups, PLA cups, bioplastic cups and compostable coffee cups, note that many compostable formats still require specific collection and processing routes, so be sure to assess all options available.
Long-life eco cups generally give the largest waste reductions in closed or semi-closed systems. For brand activation and corporate procurement, specify custom cups, custom printed cups, printed pint glasses, branded reusable cups, personalised cups and corporate branded drinkware manufactured by an IML supplier with proven in-mould labelling and injection moulding capability.
Next steps
If you operate a stadium, arena, theatre, pub group or other food and drinks venue and want to scale a reuse programme, Great Central Plastics can supply eco-friendly drinkware in pint, half-pint and shot formats, with branding and printed features to support deposit or donation models.
Specify your target volumes, desired colours and any barcode or QR requirements, and we will quote for bulk reusable cups with lead times aligned to your fixture or trading calendar.
