- CupClub
Plastic cups are
returned to bins
located in partici-
pating London
cafés for cleaning
and reuse (up
to 132 times). It’s
a cost-neutral solu-
tion for coffee
shops that could
help reduce the esti-
mated 250 billion
cups that wind up in
landfills each year. - The SoluBlue Cup
This bioplastic container
is made entirely of materials
derived from plants and
degrades in weeks, on land
or in water, with no hazardous
traces. It’s designed for cold
beverages and can be
discarded in food streams
and used for compost.
How three
other startups
are tackling
the problem of
disposable cupsCREATING
A MORE
SUSTAINABLE
CUP78 FASTCOMPANY.COM
Few things make America’s plastic addiction seem
as urgent as walking through a Phoenix-area Sprouts
Farmers Market with Troy Swope, cofounder and CEO
of Footprint, a plant-based packaging company using
technology to wean corporations off single-use plastics.
Sprouts is a natural-food chain that collects waste to be
recycled at each of its 30 stores, and last year averaged
more than 1,000 pounds of recycling per location every
day—meaning that what we are observing represents
the best of many bad options in the grocery business.
We pass plastic milk jugs, plastic chip bags, card-
board pasta boxes with tiny plastic display windows,
plastic bags containing chopped lettuce, and clear plas-
tic egg cartons. “So much waste,” Swope groans, in his
trademark PLASTIC KILLS T-shirt.
Sprouts cofounder Kevin Easler, who is now the CEO
of sustainable-business investment company Zenfinity
Capital and chair of Footprint’s board, has joined us for
this stroll. He points out a mountain of strawberries in
plastic clamshells: “This one drives me crazy,” he says.
All too often, “grocers go to their suppliers and say, ‘Put
it in something besides plastic,’ and the suppliers go,
‘There is nothing else.’ ” Plus, he adds, in the case of the
strawberries, “plastic encourages mold.”
Swope eyes a boxed water that markets itself as
Earth-friendly. “Not only does it have both paper and
aluminum,” he sighs, “but the inside has a hidden plas-
tic lining that isn’t easily recycled.”
We reach the meat section, where Swope and Easler
pause to appreciate Beyond Meat’s (No. 12) new Be-
yond Sausage tray, an unusually sturdy and attractive-
looking brown-fiber case that biodegrades in 90 days.
It’s made by Footprint.
Swope created Footprint in 2013 with Yoke Chung, a
close friend and now the company’s chief technology of-
ficer, in order to tackle food packaging’s environmental
and human-health problems. They started by searching
store aisles for pointless plastic—TV packaging, tooth-
brush boxes, wine shippers—and then cold-calling the
manufacturer in hopes of business. Today, the company,
which has 1,200 employees and factories in the U.S. and
Mexico, is gaining prominence in an industry where
the widely available and cost-effective options remain
woefully eco-unfriendly. The trillion-dollar (and grow-
ing) consumer packaged goods industry’s meat trays,
shelf-stable bowls, disposable cups, and other contain-