Reath is awarded grant funding from Starbucks and Hubbub "Bring it Back" fund

Today, environmental charity Hubbub and Starbucks® announced the winners of the Bring It Back Fund, created to fund innovative new solutions and systems for sustainable packaging in the food and beverage industry.

Following a competitive application process which launched in May, the fund has increased to £1.4 million to ensure six innovative reuse solutions can be piloted across the UK, with the first project launching in the next few months.

Reath Technology is one of the six winners. The female-founded tech company based in Edinburgh will build on its existing reuse and RFID technology to create 'next generation' reuse tracking software, as well as a customisable footprint calculator, to help demonstrate how reuse performs well commercially and environmentally.

Six pilots, six ways to shift habits

Each pilot will tackle a different way to test and learn how to shift people's habits toward alternatives to single-use packaging, through behaviour-change incentives, research projects, new technology, the expansion of existing successful reuse systems, or entirely new service models.

The full list of UK winners:

• Reath Technology. Building next generation reuse tracking software and a customisable footprint calculator on top of existing reuse and RFID technology.
• Keep Scotland Beautiful. Piloting a large-scale reusable cup deposit scheme for the first time in Scotland, in the remote, rural setting of the Highlands, with NorthCoast 500, Zero Waste Scotland and Highland Good Food Partnership.
• Green Street. A returnable coffee cup and food packaging system in Bradford working with local cafes and restaurants, including lead partners Bread + Roses and My Lahore, trialling reward incentives with digital rewards platform Maybe*.
• Again. Testing how localised doorstep collection of reusable packaging can increase the uptake of reuse systems and improve convenience, in central London, with meal delivery platforms, restaurant chains and delivery kitchen operator Karma Kitchen.
• junee. A reuse-as-a-service startup partnering with food market Mercato Metropolitano in South London to eliminate single-use food packaging by making reuse the default for customers, price competitive for traders and operationally simple for all parties.
• PECT. A local environmental charity researching perceptions and barriers around reusable packaging through behaviour change trials in Peterborough, in partnership with RECOUP.

What the funders said

Gavin Ellis, Director and Co-founder of Hubbub, said: "With the Bring It Back Fund, we set out to find innovators with pioneering new approaches to challenge single-use packaging in the food and drink sector. We were highly impressed with the quality of the entries received and we are looking forward to working with the winners to tackle this major environmental problem. With this funding, we will be able to test and learn from real-world trials and hopefully demonstrate that reuse systems are safe and easy to use, and can benefit the food and drink industry, consumers and the environment."

Alex Rayner, General Manager at Starbucks UK, commented: "Our latest work with Hubbub, the Bring It Back Fund, builds on our reusables work, aiming to find new ways to inspire people and our customers to choose to reuse. It is important for us as a company that we continue to drive industry-wide innovation, as we work to increase reusability and inspire greater reusables uptake in local communities across the UK."

The judging view

Garance Boullenger, Project Manager at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, said: "It's great to see the growth in funding of impactful innovations in the reuse space, and we look forward to seeing how the learnings from the implementation of these projects can accelerate the transition to a circular economy for plastics."

Dr Garrath Wilson, Senior Lecturer in Experience Design at Loughborough University, said: "Although the scale and the localised approaches to applying Circular Economy principles for reuse might differ, each project has a clear sense of whom the change is for and why now is the time to act."

The public appetite is already there

Development of the fund was informed by Starbucks and Hubbub's ongoing work to drive the uptake of reuse, including the Cup, Cup and Away campaign at Gatwick Airport, with further insights from polling of UK adults on the most common barriers to reuse.

The research found a clear appetite to cut down on single-use plastics: 41% of people are more worried about how much single-use plastic is used in society since the pandemic started, and 67% want to reduce the amount of single-use packaging they use when buying food and drink products.

The fund is supported by Starbucks' pioneering 5p cup charge, applied when a customer chooses a single-use paper cup. Introduced voluntarily in 2018, Starbucks has donated all funds to Hubbub to support sustainability efforts and waste reduction.

What this means for Reath

Reuse only scales when businesses can show it works, commercially as well as environmentally. This funding lets us extend our existing reuse and RFID technology into next generation tracking software, alongside a footprint calculator that can be tailored to a business's own packaging, so the case for reuse can be made with data rather than assumption.