Scope of the Project : Appelpop, the largest free pop festival in the Netherlands, worked with our circular system (cup-to-cup recycling) with (r)PET soft cups in collaboration with its sponsor Heineken, Huthamaki and The Rubbish Project.

The Results: Appelpop, the largest free pop festival in the Netherlands (in Tiel), teamed up with The Rubbish Project (red: the former name of the One Agency, which was a collaboration between uk based Rubbish ideas and The One Project), Huthamaki, Heineken and Avri to implement a circular cup system with the aim to ensure that the cups no longer end up on the ground or end up with residual waste, but are recycled at a high quality.  Our team, in collaboration with Huhtamaki, helped set up the closed loop system at the Appelpop Festival in 2022. All cups were made from recycled PET plastic (rPET) provided by Huthamaki. The festival worked closely with all partners to deploy a cup collection system where consumers returned used cups to the bars for recycling, thus avoiding a new cup charge. This helped to capture the cups as a clean waste stream, reducing waste and environmental pollution. The circular cup system was a great success, demonstrating a closed loop journey that was better for the environment, reduced waste, and increased the customer experience. The used cups were collected during and after the festival and recycled by The One Project back into a feedstock.  The One Project provided Huhtamaki back with the material that in its turn used the revalorized waste stream to create new cups for next year's event, completing the closed loop journey. We would like to thank everyone for a great waste-free event and can report that we have achieved a very high collection percentage. This means that for the 2023 edition we can make a large portion of the cups from the cups collected and recycled during the 2022 edition.

Our services and partnerships have played a vital role in revolutionizing the festival and event industry. At the forefront of this revolution is our innovative cup-to-cup recycling system, which is both efficient and eco-friendly. We take pride in being a key partner in the industry and are excited to have worked with some of the biggest names in the business this summer, including of course Huthamaki, but also close partners Loc7000, AB Inbev, and MOJO events (live Nation). We provide festivals with the support they need for sourcing, implementation, communication, processing and material recycling, as well as our innovative tracking software through The Rubbish Portal, which enables all events and fesivals to capture their recycling data. Our consultancy, tools, and software have helped events measure the recycling rates for their cups. This data is essential not only for events to understand their environmental impact and seek ways to minimize it, but also to comply with new legislation by reporting the data to local governments.

Through our partnerships and services, we have made significant strides in promoting sustainability and eco-friendliness in the festival and event industry. We look forward to continuing our work and helping more events become sustainable in the years to come.