The Endesa Mini Basketball Cup, the King’s Cup in Volleyball, and the 2026 Spanish Senior Short Track Championship will join Valencia CF’s matches at Mestalla Stadium and its training complex as bottle cap collection points.

València Innovation Capital is carrying out this pilot project in collaboration with Valencia CF, AIMPLAS (the Technological Institute of Plastics), and the Municipal Sports Foundation. The project enables the bottle caps collected at Camp de Mestalla to be transformed into furniture and sports equipment for municipal facilities affected by the DANA.

The “Bottle Caps for Sports” pilot project has decided to expand its plastic bottle cap collection efforts to three major sporting events, all of which will take place in Valencia over the coming weeks. This circular economy and solidarity initiative, spearheaded by València Innovation Capital and counting Valencia CF, the AIMPLAS Plastics Technology Institute, and the Municipal Sports Foundation among its partners, thus consolidates its metropolitan scope and its mission to make sports a driving force for sustainability, social cohesion, and solidarity.

Following its launch at Camp de Mestalla and the Ciudad Deportiva, coinciding with the start of the current soccer season, the project is now expanding to include the Endesa Mini Basketball Cup—from tomorrow through February 22—and the Copa del Rey Volleyball Tournament—from February 26 through March 1— both at the Fuente de San Luis Arena, as well as the 2026 Spanish Senior Short Track Championship, which will take place from February 27 to March 1 at the Luis Puig Velodrome.

Expanding the pilot program will significantly increase the selective collection of bottle caps generated during these competitions. Subsequently, this plastic waste will be processed and transformed into new sports furniture and equipment, such as bleacher seats and ping-pong table nets, which will be distributed to municipal facilities affected by the DANA in the districts of Horno de Alcedo, Castellar-Oliveral, and La Torre.

Strategic Circular Economy Project

“Caps for Sports” is a pilot program scheduled to run through the end of 2026 that positions Valencia as a leading city in the application of the circular economy to major sporting events. Paula Llobet, the councilor for Innovation, emphasized that this expansion “reinforces Valencia’s commitment to a city model that prioritizes practical innovation—the kind that improves people’s lives and addresses real challenges such as responsible waste management. The project is an example of public-private cooperation focused on innovation and social impact.”

For her part, Rocío Gil, the councilor for sports, emphasized that “every event that joins the initiative multiplies the project’s impact on solidarity and allows citizens to actively participate in the restoration and improvement of our municipal sports facilities.”

Environmental and Social Impact

The initiative has three objectives: to reduce waste at large-scale events, to promote responsible behavior among fans, and to generate a tangible return in the form of renovated facilities for neighborhoods particularly affected by the DANA.

Thanks to AIMPLAS’s technical expertise, the collected bottle caps are transformed through mechanical recycling processes into high-quality raw material suitable for manufacturing new, durable, and safe products that comply with current regulations. “European regulations require that bottle caps remain attached to bottles to prevent them from ending up in the natural environment, but at sporting events they are often removed for safety reasons. With this project, we ensure that these caps—now considered waste—are properly collected and recycled, creating value for the industry, the environment, and society,” explained Adrián Morales, the lead researcher in Mechanical Recycling at AIMPLAS.

The goal of this pilot program is to facilitate recycling and raise awareness about the importance of small individual actions that generate significant collective impact. “At Valencia CF, we’d like to express our satisfaction with the expansion of the ‘Tapones por el deporte’ project to new major sporting events in the city. Our club is proud to be part of an initiative that demonstrates that soccer—and sports in general—can be a tool for social and environmental transformation,” said Christian Schneider, Director of Operations and Infrastructure at Valencia CF.

Now, with this expansion, Valencia is consolidating “Tapones por el deporte” as a strategic initiative that integrates sustainability, innovation, and sports, and that turns every sporting event into an opportunity to move toward a more resilient city that is united and committed to the future.