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The NUS (National Union of Students) have produced a campaign aiming to reduce the number of disposable coffee cups used across UK campuses, by normalising reusable coffee cups (Ref, Appendix i). The health promotion initiative, titled the “NUS Coffee Cup Campaign”, was part of their 2018’s sustainability campaigns (NUS, 2018). The production of plastic has increased vastly in the last 50 years and looks unlikely to slow down. Plastic pollution is the latest threat to environmental and human health, with plastic particles now dispersing across ecosystems (Lambert & Wagner, 2016). As of 2016/17 the most a governement publication indicated that the highest recent age of initial participation at uk universities was 18 (28.0%) with 19 the second highest, thus main target group would be young adults between the ages of 18-22 years (National Statistics, 2018). There are five different approaches to health promotion with the one that the NUS CCC focuses their campaign around being the behavioural change approach. Health promotion initiatives who focus around behavioural change, views health as a property of individuals and subsequently take the assumption that an individual can make real improvements to their health by choosing to change their lifestyle. Along with this is that if the original behaviour does not change that they are to blame for the consequences. Looking to how this relates to the NUS CCC; the way that the campaign is phrased is that if the individual reading the poster or the information provided on the NUS’ sustainability website and that they do not change from using disposable cups to reusable ones, that their habits are to blame or damaging the environment. Behaviour change health promotion initiatives are expert led and targets individuals yet the use of mass communication is often used. There is extensive literature regarding the many different factors that affect an individual’s behaviour, and described as “enormous” (Maio et al 2007). However one thing that is reoccurring from all the different papers is that “there is no one winning model” (Darnton, 2008) and often an effective health promotion initiative is a combination of multiple different techniques, theories and models. From looking at the campaign its self-there are four main models and theories that the NUS have/could of used in order to result in changing the behaviour of thousands of students. Them being; Cognitive Dissonance Theory, SNS (social networking sites) as a novel setting for health promotion, the use of the ISM behavioural change model to create the initiative and the use of social marketing.

Through this essay, they will be analysed to give clear positives and