Instead of the single-use paper or plastic cups that Gearhard would usually line up for the barista slinging espresso, he’s passing over shiny new reusable cups that bear the slogan “Sip, Return, Repeat”. Customers who need their lattes to go can take the purple cups with them, then return them to one of 60 bins scattered across downtown Petaluma when they’ve finished. Each cup comes with a trackable QR code to help monitor results.
I suspect that making metal insulated cups is cheap these days. Perhaps this could solve that. I doubt people would hoard mountains of them. Then it becomes a matter of paying for the hoarded ones. People hoarded and still do some glass bottles where glass bottle replacement schemes exist/have existed.
Thinking more on this point, a genuine replacement for single use plastics for beverages could be a soda can equivalent, cheap, double wall aluminum container. If someone can make such a container for low enough cost, that could be a solution since aluminum is infinitely recyclable.
Metal as a whole but especially aluminum transfers heat really well the way to stop that is to create a vacuum between the walls of the cup which costs significantly more than plastic forming, then that vacuum can be readily damaged if it’s dropped and it’s even recommended that it isn’t put through heavy dishwasher cycles which both are likely to occur. Finally you have the issue that people would just keep them for home as the double walled cups can be expensive which would mean they aren’t available in shops and thus you have to use more single use plastics. While plastic cups don’t sound great this plan would reduce overall plastic usage