SANTA CRUZ — Get ready to pay an extra quarter for that cup of coffee or soda — unless you bring your own cup.

Tuesday, Santa Cruz County approved a 25-cent fee for each disposable cup sold at restaurants, coffee shops and other food vendors. Once adopted, the fee would apply to all businesses in the unincorporated county starting July 1.

It’s the latest step in the county government’s long-standing campaign to curb waste, and follows similar ordinances passed earlier this year by Berkeley and Watsonville.

Disposable cups, officials say, are among the most commonly littered items in the county. Along with other single-use food packaging, the cups account for about one-quarter of Californians’ waste.

Santa Cruz County Zero Waste Programs Manager Tim Goncharoff estimates that 50 million disposable cups may be used in Santa Cruz County each year. He cautioned that the number is a rough estimate based on extrapolations from state and national data.

Disposable cups that can’t be recycled or composted — at least in theory — are already prohibited at food-vendors in the unincorporated county. But changes in global recycling industry have led to more and more nominally recyclable goods winding up in landfills.

The cup-fee ordinance was approved Tuesday without opposition by the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. The ordinance returns to the board for final adoption Dec. 10.

Board chair Ryan Coonerty, who backed the ordinance but was absent from the meeting, called it “another step forward for our community” in a prepared release.

“From being one of the first counties to offer curbside recycling to prohibiting sales of Styrofoam, Santa Cruz County has led the way when it comes to protecting the Environment,” Coonerty said.

How it works

Similar to the statewide fee for single-use shopping bags, the cup fee is designed to change consumer habits by creating an incentive to bring a reusable cup or mug.

It would apply to essentially all businesses selling prepared food and drinks — including restaurants, fast-food chains, coffee shops, bakeries, cafeterias, movie theaters and food trucks.

Businesses would pocket the fees, at least for now. However, officials are looking into diverting the funds raised, estimated at $1 million annually, to environmental programs.

“I would prefer that we spend these fees on environmental projects, but that would require an election,” 5th District county Supervisor Bruce McPherson said Tuesday.

Customers who can show a voucher or payment card demonstrating they are enrolled in WIC or welfare programs are exempt from the fee. And businesses that would face a hardship by imposing the fee can apply for a year of exemption under the county ordinance.

One potential point of friction with the ordinance is the condition of reusable cups brought in by customers. Filling customers’ cups is already commonplace at many coffee shops, but it remains to be seen how other vendors will adapt to the new rules.

Under the ordinance, vendors are allowed to refuse to fill any reusable cup that is “cracked, chipped or corroded, appears inappropriate in size, material, or condition for the intended beverage, or that appears to be excessively soiled or unsanitary.”

Changing habits

Fee incentives have been shown to change consumer habits, according to Goncharoff.

After Santa Cruz County imposed a bag fee in 2011, about 90% of shoppers were observed bringing reusable bags within a month of implementation in a county-conducted study, Goncharoff said.

“Now we don’t anticipate that kind of remarkable embrace of this ordinance,” Goncharoff said. “We hope to get to 50% in the first year.”

The city of Santa Cruz is expected to consider its own cup fee in January, while the county is charging ahead with additional waste-curbing measures targeting contact-lens recycling, and taking a close look at balloons and plastic microfibers, in 2020.

Officials in Scotts Valley and Capitola are also discussing cup fees, according to Goncharoff. As with many waste-curbing measures, he said he expects the early adopters will likely lead to more widespread proposals.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see these popping up all over California soon, and eventually beyond,” Goncharoff said. “It’s happened many times. We’ve come to expect that to some extent.”