03/08/2026
Some heavy news to share today.
We’ve made the tough call to discontinue Again Again’s Classic deposit/return cup system — the one we launched back in 2018.
Over the years we’ve given it everything, running through four iterations trying to crack single-use waste. That very first deposit/return model is still, in our view, the most impactful of them all. But the hard, ugly truth is this: it costs us more to deliver than it brings in, and neither adoption nor return rates have ever climbed high enough to justify the cost and effort at the scale we need.
Our network has organically narrowed to a small, mighty group of cafés — every one of them holding sustainability values high, with genuine champions behind the counter driving the change. We’ve kept supporting them for a long time, even as it cost us to do so, because we believe in this kaupapa as much as they do. Winding this down is not a decision we’ve taken lightly, and it doesn’t feel good to be the ones withdrawing that support.
This isn’t the end of the movement, though. We’re currently piloting a tap-to-borrow model with Foodstuffs and Bonson, and we remain absolutely committed to reuse as a concept. But we can no longer justify carrying the losses on the deposit/return system as it stands today.
Here’s the bigger truth underneath all of this: reuse systems like ours are swimming upstream against market pressures, with a policy environment that’s done little to support innovation or genuine change. What we actually need is economic pressure on the true cost of single-use — the kind we’re starting to see in parts of Europe — paired with real legislative backing. Without that, even the best-run reuse systems will keep struggling to compete against the artificially low cost of disposables.
We’re incredibly grateful to every café that backed this system over the years. You were the ones who made it real, one counter conversation at a time. We’re gutted to be stepping back from it, but we still believe deeply in reuse — and we’re not done working on how to make it stick.
