Coffee on The Run: Cultural and Institutional Factors in Waste Behaviors

The increasing presence of large quantities of disposable coffee cups in waste and litter streams is a concern for waste managers across the coffee-drinking world. Recent studies have largely focused on encouraging behavior change in coffee drinkers through a variety of financial and informational incentives. This paper contends that this approach is largely ineffective, and instead explores the social and institutional drivers behind coffee cup waste. It describes possible pathways toward a richer and more accurate understanding of this seemingly intractable problem and the development of viable and fruitful solutions. Based on in-depth interviews with coffee drinkers, cafe owners, baristas, and local council staff, this paper concludes that in order to tackle the issue of coffee cup pollution meaningfully, it is necessary to transcend the myopic focus on only individual consumption choices and patterns and widen the analysis to the cultural and institutional factors that presently constrain pro-environmental behaviors.