Plastic disposable cups will no longer be allowed at festivals from 2024, State Secretary Vivianne Heijnen announced on Tuesday. It forces the Pinkpop organization to think about an alternative.
There is not yet a perfect replacement: “We are still working on that”, says festival manager Niek Murray. “We will be running pilots with other festivals in the coming years to see how they approach it there.”
Condition
For the time being, the consideration is mainly in the so-called hard or soft cups. The latter is popularly known as the disposable cup. “Festivals and events that use a return system are allowed to offer soft cups. The condition is that you get them back at the bar so that they can be reused and do not end up with normal waste.”
deposit
Murray then thinks of a kind of deposit system: “Then you could give visitors a coin upon arrival for which they then get their first drink plus a cup. When they get the next drink, they hand in that cup again.” The plan is still on the drawing board, Murray says. A personal hardcup cup is therefore also an option. “Maybe it will be kind of a mix between hard and soft cups.”
Bamboo
The drinking cups are in any case the biggest challenge for Pinkpop in terms of sustainability. At the eateries, materials such as wood, paper or bamboo have been rampant for years. “We started doing that about thirty years ago. In recent years it has only become more with biodegradable materials. Only backstage plastic is occasionally used, but that is not the task.”
Deadline
During the coming edition, the Pinkpop meadow will still be ‘just’ strewn with disposable cups, says Murray. “But if there is a suitable alternative for the 2023 edition, we will not wait until that 2024 deadline.”
Perfectly thrown away
One plastic disposable cup went from Pinkpop all over the world in 2015. Singer David Achter de Molen of the band John Coffey caught a cup of beer while standing on the audience. Then a sip could not be missing.