Reusable coffee cup: Is Keepcups really a successful company?

Lain Duong

7 min readMay 13, 2018

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1st question: do you know which bin to deposit your disposable coffee cup?

2nd question: Have you heard or bought a “KeepCups”?

Answer 1: The lid: Recycling bin. The cup: it depends. (Did you get it correctly?)

Answer 2: Of Course you have! BUT ARE YOU USING THEM REGULARLY?

I was completely wrong for question 1. And though I owned 3 KeepCups, I hardly ever used them.

This strange behaviour puzzled me. I loved the environment, hence, I bought the cups. But obviously, my usage didn’t align with this love at all. And so many of you are doing the same thing!!! WHY?

The psychology behind this would involve our belief system and our personal habits. But this general understanding won’t help us know how to change this behaviour. To know how, we need to have deeper and more specific knowledge of why and how exactly people are using reusable coffee cups.

Background summary

KeepCups is now so popular that it became the “Google” of the reusable coffee cup. But have KeepCups and the reusable coffee cups industry really changed our coffee drinking habit the same way as Google changed our search and internet history? I would argue No, they have NOT.

Let’s take KeepCups, the company, as an example. Their website stated that “since June 2009 KeepCups have sold over three million KeepCups, users have diverted billions of disposable cups from landfill. KeepCups are now sold in 32 countries around the world.”

And despite these millions of reusable cups being sold, we hardly see any of our office colleagues, the coffee-fuelling machines, using one. The disposable cups that we hoped to replace simply piled up higher, higher, and higher.

What’s the problem?

Every year, Australians use around 1 billion disposable coffee cups.
To hold liquid, these “paper” cups are lined with a layer of plastic, which makes difficult to recycle. The BIO compostable cups have these plastics made from compostable materials (e.g. wood bark), however, countries like Australia are so poor at composting, that most of these cups still end up in landfill.
Up to 90 per cent of all disposable cups ended up in landfill, i.e. around 60,000 kilograms of plastic waste per annum.
Even when the cups are bio-degradable, they often require a very specific waste management process, which is not always available. Hence, by putting the disposable cup in recycling bins, we are mostly contaminating the recycling process.
The best solution so far has been promotion of ‘reusable coffee cup’

That’s why KeepCups has been able to sell millions of those babies to 32 countries. But are the buyers really using the cup?

For more information: read this article and this one.

Research questions:

Who are the people that are using reusable coffee cup?
What make people continue using reusable coffee cups?
What stop people from using reusable coffee cups?

Phase 1: Gaining Insights

Method: Observation and guerilla interview

To tackle these questions, I apply the human-centered design process. Starting with building empathy with users before ideating and prototyping solutions. Given my lack of resources, the best approach was to observe and interview coffee drinkers in their natural environments — the coffee shops.

1. Observation:

Location: Low Down Coffee Shop, Perth.

Duration: 2 hours

Findings: Over 2 hours, there were approximately 150–200 customers. 2 people used take away cup. 1 used glass KeepCups, 1 used Contigo.

People did a variety of activities while waiting for their coffees. Mostly talking to others and using their phone.
They brought very limited key items with them (phone, wallets, etc.)

Reusable cup users:

1 man in a group of 6 office men. The user stood out as much more stylish (using a leather bag, matching scarf and jacket). Used glass KeepCups.
1 man by himself. Used stainless steel Cognito cup.

Insights:

Coffee drinking in city areas is a social activity or morning start-up.
People prefer to bring minimal for this morning activity.

2. Guerilla Interview:

Participants: 5 people, 1 used Contigo cup and 4 used disposable coffee cups. 1 cleaning lady.

Location: Low Down coffee shop, Perth for Contigo cup user and 3 disposable cup users. At-home for the remaining user.

Contigo cup user profile:

Mid 30–40, Caucasian.
Used the cup 80% of the time (he forgot otherwise).
He remembers to use the cup by leaving the cup on his office desk.
It was not just about saving the environment.
The cup is sturdy, he has used it for a long time and it lasted despite droppings.
It represented who he is, that is his love for good design and engineering
he owned a KeepCups before but did not use it because it felt flimsy.

Disposable cup user profile:

3 males, aged 30–50, 1 single and 2 have family and kid; 1 female under 30, single.
All owned one or multiple plastic KeepCups before but not using them.
All are office workers, who consume multiple coffees a day.
Reasons for buying: saving the environment, getting a bargain.
Reasons for stopping: impractical, hard to wash, no financial incentive, the cups became smelly after a while, they want to buy bigger drinks.

Findings

On motivation:

People love the environment, but the environment is not enough to change their behaviour.
People value appearance or design that fit into their image and routine. The cups help express who they were.

On behaviour:

It is difficult to remember to bring the cup because the environmental motivation is weak.
When it is in front of their eyes, they remember better. And daily usage forms a habit.
Shopping complex doesn’t cater for rubbish separation.
People have poor knowledge over the issues of disposable coffee cups.
People are time-poor to take care of cup cleanings.

Summary

The most surprising finding was that people’s usage of reusable coffee cups werenot so much about how much they wanted to protect the environment, but rather about how much the cups helped them express who they were. That insight resonated with the Contigo user, and helped us understand why the only other KeepCups user that I saw seemed to be a fashionista who only settled for the pretty-looking glass KeepCups.

The common plastic KeepCups fails its users in this aspect, as it seems to be just another generic product that people buy to soothe their feelings of righteousness. However, once this boost of morality fades, so does its usage. Additionally, its practical usage (being flimsy, difficult to wash, smelly) falls short of people’s expectation.

An additional psychological problem with such purchase is that it gives the buyers a tick of approval that they have done their part for the planet. They (probably unknowingly) allow themselves to commit other non-environmentally-friendly behaviours, simply because they have done a good deed already (more on this later).

So KeepCups and other players in the industry are perhaps very successful commercial businesses with a good heart, but they don’t seem to be successful in the business of protecting the environment.

To counter this effect, the company should (1) understand how your customers think, feel, and behave around your product, and (2) tab into intrinsic motivation such as self-expression and other psychological principles of behaviour changes.

— — — —

Phase 2: Ideate and Prototype

Upon such findings, a number of ideas were generated based on Human-centered design practice. Two ideas, in particular, were prototyped and tested.

Solution Concept 1:

Behaviour change: Get users to keep the cups within their sight.

One user was given a cup to put on his desk at work.
Check-in was done once a week for the first 3 weeks. Then one a month for the next 2 months.

Results:

P used regularly within the first 3 weeks. However, effect trailed off without reminders because his office mates didn’t use them

Conclusion:

Easy to implement with good short-term effect. However, reminders and behaviour modelling are needed to achieve habit change.

Solution Concept 2:

New product: Reusable cup carrier.

A fashionable container with handle that could be attached to bag and carried around.
Low-fidelity prototype 1 completed and tested. High-fidelity prototype 2 designed and will be tested.

Results:

Swinging and spilling were significant issues.
Additionally, the product was attention-catching, which is a good opportunity for self-expression and behaviour modeling.

Conclusion:

New product needs to be stable, potentially by using magnetic. High fidelity should be developed for testing.

— — — —

Phase 3: Iteration and prototype (in progress)

This phase is currently being conducted. As I continue growing my expertise in psychology, system thinking, and service design, it became evident to me that looking at the users alone will not solve the overall Reusable Coffee cup situation. The new experience needs to take into account the service provides (i.e. sellers of cups, promoters of cups, coffee shops), the environmentalists (government, social change groups), as well as the customers. A complete solution will need to address the cleaning element — Where / When / How / Who will do the cleaning to keep these cups fresh for the next use.

This require the approach of Service Design.

Next step:

Conduct deep interview and contextual interview with coffee shops and customers.
Prototype / pretotype a new service to validate the services’ desirability and viability