Cup refund sticker service postponed after franchise pushback

An Ediya Coffee employee shows the barcode sticker on a single-use paper cup, promoting the regulation that will be implemented in December. [JANG JIN-YOUNG]

The regulation to require cafe and bakery franchises to charge customers a refundable fee for single-use plastic and paper cups was postponed as shop owners demand more time.

The regulation that would require certain franchises to charge a 300-won (24-cent) deposit fee to customers per single-use takeout cup was originally slated to be implemented from June 10 but was postponed by the Ministry of Environment to Dec. 1, acknowledging that food business owners need more time to recover from the pandemic.

Cafe and bakery franchises with at least 100 operating locations will be subject to the regulation. Customers who return the single-use cups will get their deposit refunded, and the cafes will then send the cups to recycling companies.

“The government spent two years drafting the regulation, but the Ministry of Environment didn’t adequately communicate with the organizations and franchise owners that will actually be affected by the change,” said a spokesperson for the Korea Franchisee Union. “We agree that we need to cut our usage of single-use cups, but changes need to be made to the regulation.”

Franchise owners are bound to feel the effects of the new regulation, financially. Stores will need to attach a barcode sticker to each single-use takeout cup they give out, with each sticker costing between 311 won to 317 won. The barcodes need to be scanned when initially charging the 300-won deposit and again when refunding the customer.

Another concern is the additional trash the stickers themselves and their packaging could create.

“When the regulation is implemented, we’ll have to buy thousands of those barcode stickers,” said an owner of a cafe franchise in Seoul. “The costs to buy them all at once are going to be really high.”

The returned cups need to be rinsed by each franchise before they are collected by recycling companies, adding to employees' workloads. Making additional space to store the cups until the recycling company comes to collect them is another expected hassle.

“We’ll probably have to hire another person just to clean the returned cups,” said another cafe owner. “And we'll have to use a lot more dish soap to clean the cups, which isn’t going to be good for the environment anyway.”

A few Starbucks branches implemented a similar cup deposit policy in November last year.

The coffee chain designated 12 branches in Seoul as so-called eco-branches, offering reusable plastic cups — made of sturdier plastic than single-use ones — to takeout customers. Each cup comes with a 1,000-won deposit fee that can be refunded when customers bring the cups back, to be cleaned and reused just like the mugs or cups used within shops.

The branches have a machine where customers can return the reusable plastic cups and get their deposit back.

Although machines relieve the burden of extra work the employees would have to do, they are expensive to buy and not as fast as some customers would like.

“It actually took me longer to return the cups than I thought it would,” said Mr. Lee, an office worker who was returning cups at a Starbucks branch on June 2. “It's also a pain when you’re returning multiple cups at a time, because it takes a lot of time and you end up holding up the line.”

Some say that encouraging people to use their own tumblers and cups is more effective.

Starbucks gives a 400-won discount per drink for people who bring their own cups. Paul Bassett gives 500-won discounts, and A Twosome Place, 300 won.

“We ultimately aim to create and spread a culture where people use their own cups,” said a spokesperson for Starbucks Korea.

Starbucks customers placed 21.9 million orders using their own cups in 2021. The figure was an increase of 25.8 percent on year despite the fact that using one's own cups and tumblers was prohibited from time to time in 2021 and 2020 when Korea was under its most strict social distancing measures.

In 2019, before the pandemic, Starbucks customers ordered with their own cups 17.3 million times, up 84.5 percent from the year before.

BY MOON BYUNG-JOO, LEE TAE-HEE [lee.taehee2@joongang.co.kr]