Roll Up the Rim campaign perpetuates disposable waste ideology
February in Canada is Roll Up the Rim to Win season. Since 1986, the beloved Canadian coffee and doughnut chain, Tim Hortons, has offered a chance to win food, cash, electronics, or vehicle prizes by unrolling a hidden message in the rim of their disposable coffee cups. For many Canadians, this adds some extra excitement to their routine morning coffee and enticement to return for refills throughout the day.
However, the thrill of winning a free coffee is short-lived compared to the decades it takes for a paper cup to decompose in a landfill. Calling it a paper cup is actually misleading — disposable cups at most quick serve coffee chains often use paper cups lined with plastic. This plastic coating prevents these single-use cups from being recycled at the majority of recycling facilities in Canada.
When I asked an employee at my neighbourhood Tim’s what happens if you bring your own reusable mug to fill, he explained that in most cases, they will offer you an empty small-size Roll Up the Rim cup, which upon acceptance, negates the positive impact of using a reusable mug in the first place.
And while chains like Tim Hortons appear to uphold eco-friendly initiatives with their ceramic mugs and in-store recycling programs, according to a CBC Marketplace investigation, many of the cups placed in the in-store recycling bins are sent straight to the garbage bin anyway. As for the ceramic mugs they provide — in my experience (and what I’m guessing is yours, too) — most employees automatically reach for the disposable cups without asking if your meal is to go or not.“Tim Hortons is one of the few quick service restaurants to offer china mugs, plates and bowls to guests eating in our restaurants,” the Tim Hortons FAQ page reads. Surveying the interior of the local Tim’s where I sat and drank hot chocolate from my mug (which I presented at the start of my order), I noticed that every guest except for me had been handed their food and drinks in disposable packaging.
Another eco initiative many chains offer is to provide a 10 cent discount for customers that choose to bring a reusable mug into the store. But from what I could see, this discount wasn’t advertised anywhere in the storefront, and often, this incentive isn’t enough to convince customers to shoulder the inconvenience of lugging their own mug with them all day. Adding to the inconvenience is when customers bring in a reusable mug from a different store, which might have cup sizes that don’t conform to Tim Hortons’ sizes, making it difficult for employees to gauge what price to charge.
The Tim’s employee I spoke to told me that if customers bring a non-Tim’s brand reusable mug, the employees are instructed to guess the closest size, and should there be extra space left at the top of the mug, most are happy to fill it up the rest of the way without charging for extra. And if you ask to use the in-store ceramic mugs, you can choose from small, medium, or large, but won’t get the 10 cent discount. Another important note is that cold drinks can’t be served in reusable containers of any sort — they unfortunately don’t fit into the cold drink machines. One area that I initially felt certain would be disappointing was the accessibility for drive-thru goers to use their reusable mugs. The Tim’s employee, however, reassured me that if you wanted to go through the drive-thru, you should just mention to the drive-thru employee that you wish to use a reusable mug when you order, then hand it to them through the first available drive-thru window.
But speaking with friends who have worked at Tim’s before, one explained that in the interest of moving the drive-thru line quickly, it was standard for employees to measure the drink size with a paper cup, pour it into their reusable mug, then throw out the cup.
This might not be standard practice at every single coffee chain, as each franchise is independently owned and operated, but it’s alarming to imagine how little some employees and customers think of their waste contribution. Canadians used an estimated 1.5 billion disposable coffee cups in 2010.
Only a tiny fraction of these cups are actually recycled, and let’s not forget the amount of energy it takes to manufacture and transport them.
While Tim Hortons isn’t the sole villain to perpetrate the environmental epidemic of disposable paper cups, I would like to challenge them to deliver on their promise to deal with the “litter issue.”In the near future, I hope to see a stronger push for ceramic mugs to be used in-store, drive-thrus to become more reusable mug-friendly, and chances for customers to participate in Roll Up the Rim to Win while using their reusable mugs.
As a brand that’s so strongly associated with being Canadian, Tim Hortons can’t deny how much influence they have. Why not offer Roll Up the Rim prizes as encouragement for bringing their reusable mugs? It’s time to convince consumers that reducing billions of items of waste is possible, even if it’s just one coffee cup at a time.
Photos by Alora Griffiths/The Ontarion