Overview

• The city installed NOMU ENTERPRISE’s cup-reuse vending machine at Yokohama City Hall as the first unit in Japan and began a formal demonstration on September 29.
• The pilot runs for a year to assess costs and demand, offering 300-milliliter drinks from more than 150 options via a smartphone app at roughly ¥150–¥390.
• The system uses a stainless inner cup that is collected, washed, and reused, paired with a biomass outer case that users keep to limit disposable packaging.
• Separately, Yokohama, Morinaga, and TerraCycle launched a program at Tsurumi Sports Center to collect empty pouches from jelly drinks such as in Jelly.
• Collected pouches will be sorted by identical material for higher-quality material recycling, with plans to turn the plastic into litter-picking tongs through this co-creation proposal.