Coffee giant Starbucks has quietly taken a big step toward sustainability by significantly reducing its use of plastic cups, instead switching to paper cups for its cold drinks.
The switch will take effect at 580 of its US stores across 14 states and aligns with the company’s sustainability targets, established in 2022. They aim to make all of their packaging out of sustainable materials that can be recycled or composted by 2030.
Plastic cups, made out of propylene, to be exact, are often labeled as recyclable. However, they are often not processed properly, thus rendering the whole concept of recyclability useless. One researcher found that Starbucks locations across Southern California would allow regular garbage to take the refuse customers tossed into the recycling bins in-store and drop them off at a landfill or incinerator instead of the recycling center.
Why Is Starbucks Changing Its Cups?
That researcher’s name is Jan Dell, a retired chemical engineer, and her work pretty much single-handedly convinced Starbucks that its sustainability initiatives were flawed and failing and the company needed to do more. Its solution was to sidestep the issue of recyclable waste being sent to the landfill by designing an environmentally friendly paper cup that will do significantly less damage no matter where it’s disposed.
While it is a sizable change, 580 locations are just a drop in the bucket. Starbucks has 16,000 locations in the United States that will still be offering plastic cups for its cold drinks. It’s probably best to view this move not as a revolution or a grand transformational shift but rather as a trial balloon.
It is all a part of a larger shift toward sustainability and, in some cases, cost-cutting, as Starbucks is exploring alternative options for reducing waste like offering in-store customers their drinks in ceramic mugs or allowing customers to get their drinks in personal reusable containers instead of the cups provided in-store.
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