Founder Story: Meet Safia Qureshi, Founder of CupClub

Globally, we are only recycling 14% of all plastic packaging. At this rate, our oceans will be filled with more plastic than fish by 2050.

In reaction to that fact, Safia Qureshi, founded CupClub, a portfolio company from the R/GA IoT Venture Studio UK. We spoke with her about her mission to change the world, one innovation at a time, starting with a cup service designed to reduce single-use plastic packaging.

CupClub is a returnable packaging service designed to hold both hot and cold drinks. They partner with businesses to make drinks-on-the-go more sustainable; working together towards the ultimate goal of zero waste. All of CupClub’s products are designed in the UK by an experienced team of designers and engineers and they are designed for a minimum of 1,000 uses. CupClub was born out of Safia’s interest in technology and design and how their intersection can boost the circular economy.

We’re excited to continue to share the incredible stories of a diverse range of founders tackling problems in industries like healthcare, blockchain, pet care, advertising and more. In our second Founder profile of the year, you’ll hear Safia dive into how her background as an architect, how design is failing to think about a product’s full life cycle, and advice on how other founders can embrace circular economy principles.

Tell us the story of how CupClub came to life.

“So I actually started CupClub in my creative design agency, Studio [D] Tale. I’m an architect by trade and I was really excited and passionate about setting up an agency that looked at ways that design could really alleviate some of our biggest problems around the environment, social issues, and concerns around global plastics use.

In 2015, we discovered there is an incredible amount of harm that society is creating from consumerism that uses plastic packaging. We decided this is a huge area that we could use design as a way to fix it. So we asked ourselves, how do you design products that are usually constantly disposed of? I was researching it really heavily and then I had a light bulb moment.

I was on the train and saw a bunch of guys all drinking their coffee on their way into work and they all had this identical product in their hands. It was clear that they all started their journey at the same location and then they got off at the same stop and threw it in the nearest bin. And I found that really interesting and thought, I could give them a better product and instead of throwing this out every day on their commute, why isn’t that something that’s maybe reused daily? At the time, I was kind of naively thinking, wouldn’t it be great if people could borrow products and packaging and just return it as opposed to throwing it away?

So for me, I saw this as a much bigger project in building the next food system to be returnable. This is CupClub’s first product category. It’s a club model, with a suite of sustainable products, but I have plans to continue building the business into a much bigger thing.”

How do you think your experience as an architect has continued to influence your decision making as Founder of CupClub?

“Architects are an interesting combination of designers and project managers. We’re bound by regulation. So, a very large amount of what we do is working within the constraints of requirements. Everything from legal requirements to city requirements. We’re used to piecing together a lot of moving parts to make one major thing work really well.

As a founder, my journey in building a business like CupClub has been very different from my journey in being an architect. But if you know how to build and manage something and get to a finished complex thing as an architect, you can do the same with your journey as a founder.

If you think of how a building is built, you’re not going to think about how you get all of the materials for the structure on-site first. You’re going to think about how to lay a foundation and then move onto other steps. However, when building a company, you’re evolving a product from zero to a full-fleshed service all at once.”

Why do you think the topic of climate change and sustainability has become more prominent in recent years?

“I think the consumer has increasingly become more acutely aware of climate change and sustainability than ever before. When we started in 2015, it was just crickets. As a founder, it’s hard to convince people that a problem exists and then provide a solution if they don’t believe it’s a problem in the first place. That’s a very hard sell.

In 2017, we saw social media become a global voice for anyone and everyone to get involved in this conversation. It became the center stage for consumers in a way where it became emotional, it became personal. As more scientific information comes out, society has come to a realization that we have a definitive time. This isn’t something that we can endlessly talk about without action.

It is now known that with current production rates, we only have about twelve years to really do something and beyond that, we’ll have less control. This has created a sense of urgency, maybe even panic, but it’s good momentum. This means that there is an opportunity to build purpose-driven businesses and brands that really provide a solution for consumers.”

What is something about environmental causes that you wish individuals and brands were more conscious of?

“We have to move away from this mindset that we can use things just one time. We have a society that has designed products for like 10 seconds. You peel and throw away. We’re so far into it that we are no longer that conscious about it anymore. We are only recycling 14% of the world’s entire plastics.”

You’re passionate about empowering other founders, designers, and technologists to think “circular.” What does this concept mean and how can people champion circular economy principles?

“I always start with thinking through the user experience. When you’re thinking about a physical product, you have to consider the end of a product’s life cycle. To date, product design has mostly focused on first impression visual appeal and less about what happens when consumers are done using it. Packaged consumer products have a very short life cycle so we really have to consider where that waste is going.”

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CupClub has recently expanded to the West Coast through two new pilot programs that will introduce two types of “smart” reusable cups in independent coffee shops in San Francisco and Palo Alto, California. The models, made mostly from plastic and outfitted with RFID chips or QR codes for tracking, are apart of a project known as the NextGen Cup Challenge, led by Starbucks Corp. and McDonald’s Corp. To find what brands, businesses, and retailers are using CupClub, download the CupClub here.

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