Using RFID Tags to Recycle Coffee Cups

A British businessman committed to the mission of sustainability in food and drink services has developed a solution incorporating RFID technology to eliminate the use of single-use paper or plastic cups.

Delete Cups founder Alasdair Hood's startup offers the system, which includes reusable drinks cups with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, readers deployed at cafe service points, and management Software for sales and returns transactions.

Hood has been testing the system in his own coffee shops over the past few years and selling the technology from these shops in a bid to expand the technology across the UK and further afield. The goal is to reduce the number of disposable cups produced in daily operations.

Delete Cups was founded with a software system that automatically links radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on any unique object to a transaction, without requiring access to customer details or their account details. In August 2023, Hood's coffee shops has been using this system instead of disposable cups.

The system is designed to be very fast without requiring any behavioral changes on the part of the customer or the barista.

Hood's company prices the solution at 50% of the price of a disposable cup, which includes a reusable cup, an embedded RFID tag, a reader and software to manage transactions and returns. This means cafe managers will no longer need to purchase any single-use cups.

Using the Delete system, cafes serve polypropylene plastic cups with built-in RFID tags. The cups, produced by sustainable packaging company Bockatech, are said to last at least 500 wash cycles.

When a customer places an order and the cup is filled, the barista can write the customer's name on the cup, which will be washed off during the next wash.

Customers will be informed that their drink comes in a reusable cup and if they take the cup back to any participating cafe to use again, they will receive a £1 refund to their account at the time of purchase.

At the checkout, during the sales transaction, the order details included an item pointing to the Delete Cups deposit, which was added to the charge for the coffee purchase.

Drinks are delivered to customers via an RFID checkout mat, where a reader and antenna capture the unique ID encoded on an RFID tag on the cup. The data is captured by the software and linked to the payment software.

When customers finish their drink, they return the cup to the cafe or another participating cafe. RFID readers are often built into the return box or located on a dedicated counter. The reader captures the rfid tag ID again, automatically returning the funds to the purchaser.

According to Hood, the system removes cups every time it is served. When a reusable cup is offered to customers for the fourth time, it has a positive impact on the environment.