Corporate Responsibility

One-Way Cups on the Way out

It is the European Week for Waste Reduction and together with Sodexo – the company catering Deutsche Telekom’s canteens in Germany – Deutsche Telekom is tackling one-way coffee cups! “Coffee-to-go” is yummy, handy and for many a symbol of all that is wrong with the “throw-it-away”-logic in our society.

One-Way Cups on the Way out

Deutsche Telekom’s “Stop Wasting – Start Caring!” initiative is aiming at developing and promoting more sustainable and resource-efficient solutions.

Deutsche Telekom and Sodexo decided together to use RECUP – an established system for reusable mugs – as a sustainable alternative for German locations in the future. In Germany alone each year 2,8 billion one-way coffee-to-go cups are used and thrown away directly after use – that are mind-boggling 320.000 cups per hour! On the other hand, one RECUP-mug can replace app. 500 one-way cups and is easy to recycle at the end of its lifespan. The established deposit systems offers a smart and easy solution: you can simply take your coffee-to-go now in a sustainable mug.

Starting this week, RECUP is tested in two pilot locations: Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt and Munich-Dachauer Str. After a successful pilot, all other Telekom locations in Germany will follow successively.

The switch fits into Deutsche Telekom’s “Stop Wasting – Start Caring!” Initiative aiming at developing and promoting more sustainable and resource-efficient solutions and contribute to a more sustainable lifestyle.

Spare resources

So much resources can be saved if we opt for returnable instead of single-use cups:

  • 11.000 tons CO2
  • 43.000 Trees
  • 40.000 tons waste
  • 1,5 billion liter water
  • 320 millions kWh Electricity
  • 3.000 tons crude oil

That’s how it works:

  • For 1 Euro deposit customers get their coffee in the reusable RECUP-mug.
  • The reusable mug can be returned in every shop partnering with RECUP (see RECUP-App or www.recup.de).
  • There, the desposit will be refunded, the RECUP cleaned and reused.


Image of a forest shown on smartphone screen.

Environment

Deutsche Telekom has made a clear commitment to climate-neutral business practices and the pursuit of a circular economy. 

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