This year we had re-usable pint and half-pint plastic cups at the bar. Now we've had a chance to count, here are the results:
We had 10080 pints on site and used 5265 of them. 9585 were returned to the supplier for re-use, meaning 495 went missing.
We had 2200 half-pints on site and used 1540 of them. 2090 were returned for re-use, meaning 110 went missing.
This is a return rate of just over 95%, which according to our supplier is "unprecedented"! They usually see a return rate of 80% from events that charge a deposit for the cups, and as low as 40% from events that don't.
We gave 3335 discounts during the event to people who brought their cup back to the bar to be re-filled. That accounts for the difference between the number of cups used and the number of pints served (nearly 9000) and means a lot of time, water and energy was saved on washing them.
Thank you to everyone who returned cups to the bar during the event - we really appreciated the stacks of empties left outside for us in the mornings!