Global foodservice retailer McDonald’s has joined Starbucks and Closed Loop Partners as founding member of initiative to end cup waste.
Image: McDonald’s has teamed up with Starbucks and Closed Loop Partners to develop compostable cup solution. Photo: courtesy of Starbucks Corporation.
The NextGen Cup Consortium and Challenge, convened by Closed Loop Partners, seeks to develop a global recyclable and/or compostable cup solution.
McDonald’s, along with Closed Loop Partners, will contribute up to $5m to support the launch of NextGen Cup Consortium and Challenge in September. The latest funding brings the total funds committed to challenge to $10m.
The challenge will gather ideas from innovators, entrepreneurs, industry experts, and recyclers to develop generation recyclable or compostable cups.
Based on key milestones, the awardees will secure acceleration funding up to $1m. Around seven awardees will enter a six-month accelerator program to help scale their solutions.
McDonald’s USA chief supply chain officer and senior vice president Marion Gross said: “We are excited to join Starbucks and Closed Loop to help solve this pressing challenge as collaboration is key to finding a scalable, lasting global solution.”
NextGen will enable to develop a global end-to-end solution, which will potentially allow the 600 billion cups across the globe to be diverted from landfills and developed as sutainable solutions.
NextGen will establish an advisory council, which includes environmental NGOs such as WWF, human-centered design, academic leaders, the paper and plastic industry, recyclers, composters, and municipalities.
Initially, the NextGen Cup Challenge, along with OpenIDEO, will collect ideas from innovators and solution providers to recover single use cups, focusing more on the fiber based hot and cold cup.
This initiative will help develop fully recyclable or compostable cup in North America.
Starbucks global social impact vice chairman Colleen Chapman said: “We are proud to come together with industry partners like McDonald’s to drive innovative, scalable solutions for cup waste.
“A better cup will benefit the entire industry and we invite others to join us as we move these efforts forward.”
Earlier this year, McDonald’s announced goals to enhance its packaging and help significantly reduce waste to positively impact the communities the company serves globally.