Michael Cyr Co-Founder of Cup Zero
Michael Cyr is the Co-Founder of Cup Zero. Cup Zero is on a mission to eliminate waste, one drink at a time, by providing reusable cups for events with logistics, collection points, and washing included. Going zero waste has never been easier.
Cup Zero also is piloting a Reusable Coffee Cup Ecosystem app for coffee cup sharing in NYC as of Spring 2021.
Michael - it’s so great to talk to you! Let’s get right to the nitty gritty. How do people find you? Who are you hearing from about potential jobs? Who reaches out to you?
Sometimes it's an enthusiastic intern who bounces something up the chain. Sometimes there's a designated sustainability person, which is great because you don't need to convince them, we just need to work with them to convince the rest of their team, The senior level organizers are always a good place to start because they can set the framework for the sustainability goals. It also helps when a company gets its mission statement down, because it’s easy to show that using reusable cups can help them reach their overarching goals.
Have you seen that happen? Where somebody reaches out to you, and they're skeptical? Have you seen the light bulbs turn on when you talk to them?
Sometimes they come with a notepad, and they’re ready to completely change their whole operations. Once we explain how our system works, they realize It's not much different than what they’re already doing.
For example, if you’re going to buy disposable cups, you need to order them, and they get delivered to you in boxes, and then you’d distribute them to the bar areas. After the event, you put them in trash bags, and they need to get picked up by a garbage or recycling company. You have to organize all those pieces.
Cup Zero provides all of that. You order the cups from us, and we deliver everything in reusable boxes. You still serve drinks in them, but instead of putting them in trash bags, and having a garbage company pick them up, they go back in our reusable bins, and we pick them up, wash them, and store them for the next time. Easy peasy.
It sounds so easy. And a lot less wasteful. You're really streamlining the operation.
There’s a few people out there that use disposables at home. But for the most part, we're not throwing away cups and forks and plates for every meal. So why is that not accessible at larger events? It makes it a lot easier for attendees and communication. The dream is to have a whole event where you don't have to worry about what goes in the trash, what goes in the recycling, what's compostable. What's maybe compostable? What's maybe recyclable, when really there should be one reusable bin, and everything just goes back to the dishwashing facility.
Makes so much sense! No one needs to worry about what bin something goes in, and we don’t have to worry about sorting, and contamination.
Attendees are reliably really bad at sorting. And if you're trying to do the right thing as an organizer, you're looking into what all these materials are made of, where they're coming from, how they're sourced. And then you're trying to figure out what your waste removal company can take, and then how to best sort that, and how to best message that, and maybe you need to put somebody in front of the cans to tell you what goes where. When really, if we all know that if this looks and feels reusable, then we can just wash it. It alleviates a lot of headaches.
Have you done an analysis of how many uses it takes for a reusable cup to have a lower carbon footprint than a single use cup?
We haven’t done actual research ourselves, too busy saving cups! but all the math and science is out there. Upstream Solutions, a nonprofit that's pushing the reusable movement, and they’ve put out a great life cycle analysis, comparing a variety of different disposable options (Read the report here). The data is really clear that even after a couple of uses, anything reusable is going to be better than a disposable option.
We forget about all the resources that go into making a disposable product in the first place. Resources must be drilled from the ground, or you have to grow all the corn to make the PLA. Then you have to ship it around the world, and after a single use, you have to dispose of it. And if it gets recycled, it needs to be shipped around the world again, to be melted down somewhere else. With only a couple of uses, a reusable item starts to pay back from an environmental standpoint. And for the most part our cups can be used hundreds of times.
What would a “dream future scenario” look like for our industry?
My dream is to have local dishwashing facilities in every medium to large city. Cincinnati, Dayton, Milwaukee, they all have concert venues that need a reusable solution. Concert venues and places that are doing three or four events or concerts a week need a back and forth reusable service.
That makes sense. Restaurants have local washing facilities for the linens and napkins. Why not cups?
Great point! The more you learn about our business, you realize these systems exist elsewhere. We just call it something different. It’s the same thing as a linen service. And companies like ours can drop off clean items at the same time as we're picking up the dirty items.
.Glassware doesn’t make sense at concerts, it's too busy, people get drunk, they drop them, it's expensive to replace those kinds of things. And when you're trying to wash 3,000 of something, you almost need a secondary staff just to be able to do that. Especially in a place like New York, the price of square footage is really high, you can't allocate that square footage towards your dishwashing space, when you're focused on selling tickets and selling drinks.
I think you’ve just destroyed the myth that reusables are more complicated that disposable. Thank you!
If you're an event organizer, and you've done a wedding or a gala, you've used a party rental service. We operate in much the same way. If your event needs glassware, rock on, that's your solution. But wherever that switch might be to disposables, whether it’s costs, or volume, or you're outside, or whatever the reason is, that is the niche we're trying to fill. Things like concerts, festivals, they're outdoors, they're high volume, and those rental companies might not have an inventory of 50,000 glasses like we do.
It's a no brainer to use reusable cups!
We think so!
Okay, a sticky question...
That's the kind of question I always always like!
Many events make revenue for selling bottled water. But if we’re trying to be sustainable, how do we get around that? While we know it’s not good for the environment, bottled water is a revenue source for events.
Yes, especially if you're talking about a plastic bottle you're buying for 20 cents and selling for five bucks. I don't know if we need to compete with that, and organizers have to protect that piece of the revenue pie. And that's the nut that we sustainability folks have to crack. We have to make this economically viable for these events and festivals and venues.
There are existing solutions out there that are slightly more sustainable, like water in aluminum bottles, because at least you can recycle it. But they're pretty pricey for an event. We've always kept in mind the costs and revenue structure for events. A lot of the events we work with generate revenue from running a deposit system for the cups, for example.
But we’re coming up with another solution: we’re working with a bottler, so we can offer a reusable water bottle that can be sold at events with a deposit system. We’d rent the bottles to the events, and they can sell it for whatever they want, and then we'll take the bottles back, and wash and sanitize them.
But nine times out of ten, our cups are used for cocktails and wine. And the events are selling cans of beer. It takes five seconds to pour a draught beer versus one second to open up a can. If you've got a bar three people deep it's gonna make sense to do cans for the most part.
Right, unless they have someone filling, filling, filling cups, and then they just hand it to you.
That's how they do it in Europe. I used to live there and they're more particular about what they're drinking out of, and cups are a better drinking experience because you can get the aroma and the foam and all that stuff. So in Europe they pre-pour everything. The person taking the order is just turning around and grabbing two full beers, and they have someone else just holding the tap open, putting cups underneath the whole time.
Yeah, I've seen them do that with plastic cups at Central Park for Summer Stage. Summer Stage should use reusable cups instead.
Yes! I’ve seen some “sustainability” themed concerts being hosted this fall, and I think: “Really? What are YOU doing to make a change?”
Are there other things that you've seen in Europe that we could learn from?
A lot of things regarding waste are handled better in Europe. Whether you're in 16th century London, or right now anywhere in Europe, the disposal of everything is more expensive, so they've always been more efficient about dealing with their waste. We Americans came into this big blank canvas of a huge country, so landfills have always been really cheap here. And I think that's accelerated our disposable culture here.
But now these landfills are getting filled up. New York City trucks it’s trash to far away states these days. That can’t be cost effective.
And what about compost? We need a better system and infrastructure for composting.
Organic waste is the most expensive for cities because it's the heaviest. So when you start weighing a bag of garbage, it’s the food that weighs the most, and it’s the most expensive thing to haul. In terms of infrastructure, the focus is on clean energy and electric vehicles. But waste is a climate issue, right? It takes about 20 gallons of CO2 to make a cup. And it takes over a gallon of water to make a single-use cup. And the numbers are the same for forks, or plates, or paper towels. We're not thinking about the resources that go into using a disposable product for only five minutes of use.
How are you feeling about the future of reusables?
Coming out of the pandemic, I thought it was gonna happen a lot slower. But fortunately we’re busier than we've ever been. What brings me joy is like seeing a-ha moments, every time someone sees a reusable cup system, or reusable item. And they're just like, “Oh, that's so smart.” I had that moment when I first saw reusable cup systems in Belgium many years ago. For the most part attendees are super thankful that event organizers are doing this. They're the ones dancing in the trash all over the floor. If you're sticking around to the end of the show, you see the sea of plastic all over the floor. And they're just really thankful that something's happening.
Let’s talk about branding the reusable cups. How does that work?
We can absolutely brand the cups, we just avoid doing it for one time events. Our cups are designed with a thicker plastic, so they take more resources to make. So for us to do good, they really need to be reused at least a couple times to break even from an environmental standpoint. So we brand things for ongoing arrangements, tours, or venues.
Everyone wants stuff branded, but that’s the line we need to draw. Ultimately if we're not doing the right thing, then it's not worth doing it in the first place. There's the souvenir model, where attendees are in theory taking them home, you're saving waste on drinks, two, three and four. Personally, I don't need any more cups in my cupboard. I don't know about you guys, but I just don't need any more branded stuff to keep and take home.
We agree 100%. It’s a good place to draw the line.
But that being said, if there's a venue or an ongoing event, we can totally put logos on the cups, and we’ll run the same washing service for those. We'll take back your branded cups, and wash and repack them. One thing we haven't gotten into is liquor brands. If you're reading this, liquor brands, we should do a tour of all the events that you're sponsoring.
I think it's less expensive if you add up the cost of branding disposables over a period of time. It's going to be cheaper to wash these things.
By the way! I thought of a new dream customer. Celebrate Brooklyn at The Prospect Park Bandshell produced by BRIC. You know, when we first started Cup Zero, it’s always been my dream scenario because they're running a couple of concerts every week in the summertime, it's like we're talking about thousands of cups being thrown away at a place like that. The crowds perfect, I love the music there myself too.
It's the best thing about summer in Brooklyn!
Agreed! And back to liquor brands, If you're a sponsor, do you want the banner on top of the bar? Or do you want something in everyone's hands?
Here’s another thing, most of the time, programs work on deposit systems. When you buy your first drink, you pay $2 for your cup. And then if you go and bring back your cup, get your $2 back. You can swap it out as many times as you want. What we're working on now, with a different event, is a “donate your deposit” option. And since BRIC partners with the Prospect Park Alliance, why not give people the option where they can bring their cup back and redeem their $2 deposit, or they can just drop that cup in a donation bin, and that money goes straight to BRIC or the Prospect Park Alliance? Everybody wins.
Everybody does win. People want an easy way to do good, right? And that might be donating their deposit instead of redeeming it. And I’m sure you have seen event attendees be excited and thankful that the event organizers are not using single-use plastic cups?
We've been watching this the whole time. Everyone's really thankful that this is happening. No one is bothered by the $2 deposit. Event organizers haven't seen any decrease in bar sales from putting that deposit on. This system works.
For the most part, the event organizers usually generate a profit from it. Not everyone necessarily wants to wait in the line to get their two bucks back. Or it's 2am, and they just found the love of their life, or called an Uber. So there’s money left on the ground for the venue to pick up.
What else are you working on?
I mentioned the reusable water bottles. But we're also going to add small plates and cutlery to our offering. And we're launching our reusable to-go app for coffee cups. You can download the app right from our website. If you're in New York, you’re able to borrow a reusable coffee cup, and then drop it off at any other participating location. It's happening elsewhere in the world, why not New York? We've done a lot of events and learned a lot, so why can't we take that to the coffee world?
What are the locations?
It's gonna be Brooklyn, we've got a couple pilot partners in Bushwick, Flatbush and Park Slope. And then we're going to roll out the rest to our enthusiastic partners in the Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, and Red Hook areas,
Sounds like you’re really busy right now!
Sometimes I feel like my brain’s in too many different places at once. But I know it's needed. I know the world is going to get there at some point. And I think it's going to be our model, and there's going to be some other solutions out there too. And it's going to take all of us to to make this thing happen.
Website: www.cupzero.com
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LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/cup-zero