City council will consider getting rid of Vancouver's $0.25 fee for all single-use cups later this month.
Coun. Rebecca Bligh is bringing forward a motion on Feb. 14 asking council to repeal Vancouver’s single-use beverage cup fee, which began in January of 2022.
"The cup fee was designed basically to address concern around reduction in single-use waste," she tells V.I.A. "Particularly around single-use cups."
However, more than a year after the fee was put in place, Bligh says it's not having the intended impact.
"After a year — initially as well — it's quite clear the top-down-stick approach was fraught with unintended consequences," she says. "And there's very little change in consumer behaviour."
Bligh explains there are a variety of issues she has with the fee, including uncertainty of where that fee goes since it's collected by businesses, from independent coffee shops to large corporations, and not tracked.
"The cup fee is hundreds, millions of dollars of revenue," she says. "And there's no line of sight where that money goes."
She's also heard anecdotally it's hurting businesses as commuters and others coming into the city will stop for items like a morning coffee just outside the city's boundaries as they head into Vancouver. At the same time, Bligh notes it hurts the affordability of the city, increasing costs for everyone.
At the same time, the fee can be charged in instances when the consumer has no other option than to get a single-use cup, like at a hockey game or when getting some blended drinks.
Fee was meant to encourage reusable cups
One changes the fee was created to cause was to encourage people to use reusable cups, either their own or one from a program, but Bligh says there's no evidence that's happening.
"We haven't seen what we hoped to see," she says.
Instead of punishment, as in a fee, she suggests more incentives for consumers to do the right thing could be more effective, from creating a deposit structure, like with pop cans, to pushing reusable cup programs.
"We've got to empower businesses to then empower their consumers to move away from habits," she says.
In March 2022, Bligh tried to end the fee with an amendment to a staff report, but that was voted down 7-4. This time she's bringing forward her own motion. to the new council which is dominated by Mayor Ken Sim's ABC part, of which Bligh is a member.
