Kiwi company halves waste at Rhythm and Vines festival with reusable designer cups

December 31, 2017

Thousands of people in one place makes for a big clean up but one company aims to make festivals more sustainable.

A Kiwi company is looking to make festivals more sustainable, one plastic cup at a time.

Twenty-thousand festival-goers are currently at Rhythm and Vines festival in Gisborne, where they will bring in the New Year.

However, that many people in one place can make for a lot of mess.

Globelet CEO Ryan Everton is looking to change that by supplying the festival with designer reusable cups made from recycled plastic.

The 25-year-old said the cups, which the company sells, can be taken home as a memento or returned for cash, where they can be washed and used again.

"RNV would have used 100,000 disposable cups, they now use 20,000 reusable Globelets," he said.

Mr Everton said 100 per cent of the Globelets are accounted for, "I think 0.07 per cent end up in a bin".

The cups are used at more than 3000 international events, including 95 per cent of New Zealand's festivals.

Rhythm and Vines was one of the first to adopt the idea a couple of years ago.

Rhythm and Vines operations manager Dan Turner said the festival went from 36 tonnes of waste in 2014 to 14 tonnes of waste in 2016.

However, not all drinks come in cups, there are special teams on site to collect cans.

Single use plastic is kept to a minimum at Rhythm and Vines and a huge emphasis is put on recycling.

A majority of festival waste comes from campground equipment, such as tents left behind at the festival grounds.

Mr Turner said the tents are recycled with the help of the Gisborne Council, where they are pushed out to schools who use them, or given to local community groups.

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