A local Letterkenny business is helping event planners go greener by saving tons of plastic cups from going to landfill.
Branded Cups is raising a glass to going global this year after fulfilling an order to supply cups for a festival as far away as Africa.
In Kenya, the Kilifi New Year music festival took a great step forward in improving their sustainability by ordering innovative reusable cups from Donegal.
Branded Cups at Beneath the Baobabs festival in Kenya
Branded Cups at Beneath the Baobabs festival in Kenya
After years of slow growth, the perseverance of Peter Reynolds from www.Branded-cups.com to rid the world of single use plastic cups is finally paying off.
Peter told Donegal Daily: “I started my business 8 years ago after becoming so disheartened with the amount of waste produced by single use cups. Now, with the increased focus in the media on reducing disposable single-use plastics and coffee cups, our turnover has quadrupled over the last 12 months and we are now in the fortunate position of non-stop orders.
“Of course, it’s fantastic to work with festivals and events across the world, but we are really keen to work with Irish festivals, particularly in Donegal!”
Peter Reynolds, founder of Branded Cups
Branded Cups estimates that more than 100 billion single-use cups go into landfill across the world each year – that Great Pacific-sized wasteland is currently twice the size of Texas and growing.
The cups were a big hit at the ‘Beneath the Baobabs’ New Year celebration along the beautiful Kenyan coast.
Lead organizer of the electronic festival, Jonah Doyle says: “We have always been aware of the amount of waste that a large event can produce and have tried to limit this. It seemed a very logical choice to only use reusable cups on our bars and backstage.
“People love having an official cup for their drink and we hope that people will bring along cups in future from previous years! We also aimed to cut down on the sales of water bottles because we have drinking water available across the site and people just fill up their reusable cups. They have eliminated what could have been a huge amount of plastic waste from our event.”
Branded Cups at Beneath the Baobabs festival in Kenya
Branded Cups at Beneath the Baobabs festival in Kenya
The safari-like journey for the cups was certainly worth it for this increasingly popular celebration of brighter future and beginnings.
Celebrating the sustainable living of communities within Kilifi, East Africa, and the rest of the world, is more important than ever, with the global focus now on climate change and the conservation of biodiversity – with thoughts this year particularly around ‘Sudan’, the last living male Northern White Rhino.
Animals such as Sudan remind us how vital it is for the world to be thinking sustainably, according to Branded Cups founder Peter Reynolds.
“Our impact needs to be reduced as quickly as possible,” says Peter, “Reusable cups are just one method, we need to see where we can reuse in every aspect of everything that we do.”
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