“It all started as a university project, we were asked to find a public issue in Lisbon, and our team was interested in an environmental aspect”, they told The Portugal News. The group consists of four members, Hannah Potschka, Alexandra Miu, Giulia Rosa, and Charlotte Dawson-Townsend, who are in their early 20s, from Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the USA, and Romania.

“We found that there’s a huge amount of single-use cups being thrown on the street and at the end of the night in front of the clubs. A lot of people buy drinks at one establishment and go to another, that’s how they end up on the street – they’re just discarded”, Giulia explained.

Hannah Potschka, Alexandra Miu, Giulia Rosa and Charlotte Dawson-Townsend

Deposit Systems

Research for the project began in September last year and continued until January when a solution was proposed. “We’ve been working with ZERO, one of the largest environmental organisations in Portugal, to better understand the challenges. They referred us to an expert, and we discussed deposit systems, as myself and another colleague come from countries where those are the norm”, Hannah recounted.

“We figured it would be a good idea to introduce a deposit system in the Pink Street Area”, the team elaborated on their plan, “because the establishments are so close together, we could engage multiple stakeholders in the system”.

Once the idea was formulated, ZERO put the team in contact with Ecoceno, an environmental start-up company specialised in reusable packaging. Ecoceno offered to provide a smart return bin located outside the establishments where customers can return their cups in exchange for their deposit money.

Following this progress, they began contacting different bars and clubs in the area. “We talked to 35 establishments and we’re still in very close contact with many of these to get it going. It’s a complex system we’re trying to set in place, and all the organising behind it is complicated, but we are starting to see results”, Hannah shared.

Perseverance

“Working around the bureaucracy is quite challenging, but we’re working with the parish to obtain the authorisation to implement the smart return bins. It's a slow process that depends on many stakeholders”, they added, describing some of the challenges they’ve had to navigate.

“Managing the different relationships that we’ve established and being the middleman between all the different stakeholders, it takes a lot of time”, Giulia continued. “We have a fixed timeframe, where we had to estimate how long each interaction would take. It often took longer than expected which impacted the project timeline."

Despite the setbacks, however, the feeling towards the project is generally positive. “The municipality and parish have been working on this issue for a while, they tried something a few years ago but it wasn’t suitable for the long term”, they explained. “We hope our solution will be sustainable long-term. We’re also trying to use cups that have already been produced.”

The student team and municipality both hope the project will make a positive difference in the Pink Street area, due to its proximity to the river Tejo, it is important to protect the environment.

"It was exciting to work with multiple stakeholders and move this project closer to implementation in a short timeframe", they expressed. "We never thought we’d get this far."

"Not seeing all those cups on the ground would be a great achievement. If we all work together, we can get far”, they concluded. “The cooperation of the multiple stakeholders, Ecoceno, bars and clubs, customers, parish and municipality, have the potential to inspire big change."

Author

A journalist that’s always eager to learn about new things. With a passion for travel, adventure and writing about this diverse world of ours.

“Wisdom begins in wonder” -  Socrates

Kate Sreenarong