The Horizon project STOPP aims to reduce waste in food packaging. The Swiss partner reCIRCLE brings critical expertise and business experience to the consortium.
Across Europe and the world, noon brings crowds and waste. As hungry workers scurry off to fill local eateries and quench their appetites, the striking of the clock also signifies the daily flooding of streets, bins and waterways with single-use packaging waste. With increased delivery and takeouts, single-use food packaging has become a major polluter that damages ecosystems and further contributes to environmental degradation. Founded in 2016 by Jeannette Morath, reCIRCLE is a Swiss social enterprise attempting to provide a solution to this problem. ReCIRCLE provides reusable lunch boxes to restaurants for take-away food and runs a deposit scheme through a network of participating restaurants: customers borrow a container and can return it at any partner restaurant. As reCIRCLE is a partner in STOPP, an EU and SERI funded Horizon project, we sat down with Ursina Dorothea Haslebacher, project manager at reCIRCLE in the development of new products and solutions and responsible for STOPP.
Since 2016, reCIRCLE has expanded its product range to include a large variety of reusable bowls, plates, cups and even a pizza box. They have also expanded their operations in Switzerland and abroad. Today, reCIRCLE products can be found close to 1’700 participating restaurants across Switzerland and 300 in the EU, and their network continues to grow. But reCIRCLE acknowledges that addressing single-use waste cannot rely on a product alone. As Ursina notes, “As long as it serves its purpose nobody thinks about the packaging of food.” Food packaging waste has become part of daily routines, as most people end up repeating the habit automatically. This is central to reCIRCLE’s mission who emphasise that they are not just a product but a movement that intends on changing consumer habits. This is exemplified by the container’s aubergine colour, an uncommon packaging colour that stands out from the usual disposable tableware, and is a visible attempt to trigger behavioural change.
Further in line with their effort to shift consumption and company behaviour, reCIRCLE has been an associate partner of STOPP. Based on the “Refuse, Reduce, Redesign, Reuse and Recycle” framework, the project brings together European research institutes and practitioners to develop strategies that close material cycles for food packaging. STOPP designs and runs pilots across Europe to test circular strategies for plastics while generating awareness through impact analyses, monitoring plastic use in the food industry, and designing replicable, sustainable business models. The initiative is co-funded by Horizon Europe and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), under Pillar II, Cluster 6. Aligned with the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation that came into force in February 2025, STOPP supports early implementation pilots of innovative solutions.
An example of a STOPP project is a reusable pizza box pilot, part of STOPP’s Reuse campaign, conducted in collaboration with Kotipizza, Finland’s largest pizza chain. Few items are as emotionally tied to their packaging as pizza. There is a sentimental attachment to the cardboard box that cradles and protects our beloved pies. In this pilot, the “customer receives their pizza in a reusable pizza box, slides the pizza on their own plate and the courier takes the box back to the restaurant to be washed and used again”. ReCIRCLE provided the reusable pizza boxes for this pilot that broke both habit and myth. By testing reuse in a setting loaded with ritual and convenience, the pilot shows that behaviour can change without sacrificing speed or hygiene, and it generates evidence on what actually changes consumer choices, return rates and operations. This is a clear illustration of how STOPP trials new ideas and solutions while researching disposable-waste behaviours and sustainable business practices.
Public support played an important role in STOPP’s mission and for Ursina the experience of receiving financial support from national and international funding programmes was very helpful. Approved in 2023, the project started in January 2024 and runs until the end of 2026, with a total EU Horizon grant of about €4 million. From Ursina’s perspective, the tempo of a Horizon project differs from a private company’s pace. “The speed in the project is slower…one year of planning and setting up is not what we are used to at reCIRCLE: as we are a private-sector company, not a research institute, we are used to moving much quicker.” Yet that slower cadence has benefits: “With Horizon funding, because of due diligence, we get to do things more thoroughly…more research, more market analysis at a scale that is unusual on a regular company budget. This allows STOPP to go more into detail and gives us a broader, deeper understanding of the topic.”
Public funding also raised the bar on transparency, as demanding documentation requirements increased. Switzerland’s non-association in parts of Horizon Europe added complexity: “Documentation is very different – a lot more thorough – in a public project like STOPP.” Even so, reCIRCLE notes that there are advantages to being both “in” and “out” of the Framework Programme, depending on the task.
Finally, the programme created a learning framework that imposed clear objectives, milestones, and accountability while promoted creativity and innovation. This structure and collaboration between institutions brought together researchers who, as Ursina puts it, “are just curious; they don’t judge…they want to understand how things work.” That spirit of inquiry proved a real catalyst for innovation. For a mission-driven company aiming for systemic change, this type of scaffolding helps pilot projects achieve measurable outcomes while still leaving room to iterate.
As the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation is set to reform the food-packaging value chain by 2030, for both STOPP and reCIRCLE, the next few years will be decisive. Within two years of the regulation’s entry into force, takeaway operators must accept customers’ own reusable containers, within three years, they must also offer a reusable-packaging option for food and drinks. This timeline reinforces the importance of reCIRCLE and STOPP’s core ideas for both customers and companies alike. With partners across Europe, pilots that test the everyday, STOPP stands as a model of Swiss–EU collaboration where reCIRCLE’s Swiss innovation meets European research to drive circular change across borders.