The B.C.-based coffee chain, Waves Coffee, was fined close to $31,000 last month for failing to implement a government-mandated recycling program, even after it was warned it must.
Under B.C.'s Environmental Management Act, producers of certain goods – including paper coffee cups – are responsible for the life cycle of their products. This means coffee shop owners who create their own single-use products and make a gross revenue of more than $1 million a year, like Waves Coffee, are required to implement and fund recycling programs.
In a penalty decision published on June 19, B.C.'s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy found Waves Coffee was aware of the program requirement as early as 2020, but that it still hadn't implemented something by March 2023 when compliance officers came to check on them.
The chain was handed a warning then, but still hadn't submitted a recycling program plan to the ministry by the end of November 2023, eight months later.
“Waves Coffee has a history of failing to respond to the Ministry, refusing to provide information, and generally being non-cooperative. I find Waves Coffee to have had significant awareness of the requirement to appoint a stewardship agency or get a plan approved, and the control to come into compliance was firmly within their power," director of the Environmental Management Act Stephanie Little wrote in her decision.
Even during the penalty investigation process, Little said the coffee chain regularly pushed back deadlines for responding.
When Waves Coffee Director Kayvan Rahmati did respond, he told the ministry he hadn't been aware of the contravention because he only officially took over the company in March 2022 after his father suddenly died. Rahmati didn't provide any evidence for this however, and the ministry said it had records of communicating with him since 2019.
In determining how much Waves Coffee should be fined, Little considered a number of factors, including how much the company economically benefited from not having a recycling program in place.
The ministry estimated that the coffee chain would use about 500 cups at each of its 21 B.C. locations a day, which would amount to $56,900 in economic benefits. Waves Coffee, however, countered that the number was far lower. It provided a set of incomplete data to Little that, when averaged out, amounted to 57 cups used at each location a day.
Little said she was concerned about the validity of Waves' data, but decided to land on an estimate of 100 cups. At that amount, she calculated an economic benefit of $13,891.
She then further penalized the coffee chain $10,000 for the program failure, $2,500 because it failed to implement it even after being warned, another $2,500 because for its history of contravention and $2,000 because Waves was aware of what it was doing.
Little could have lowered the overall penalty if she had found Waves had taken any steps to prevent or correct the contravention, but she did not. In the end, she landed on a total of $30,891.
Waves Coffee has 30 days from June 19 to pay the penalty or appeal the decision.