Starbucks is finding that the economics of recycling paper cups doesn’t add up, reports Adam Minter in Bloomberg View (4/8/14). Adam, author of Junkyard Planet, cites Starbucks’ 2013 Global Responsibility Report (link), which stated it is currently recycling just 39 percent of its cups, far short of the 100% it had been projecting by 2015. While Starbucks sells some “4 billion disposable cups a year,” the big problem, apparently, is that this is not “enough cups to make recycling a viable option.”
According to John Mulcahy of Georgia-Pacific, “the paper in all the Starbucks cups used in a year amounts to less than a week’s worth of production at one of his company’s paper mills.”
In other words, “recycling Starbucks cups isn’t a business; it’s a test project worth pursuing for PR, and perhaps for the day when Starbucks and other restaurants pool their used paper cups in a way that makes them attractive as a business prospect.”
Further complicating matters is that “Starbucks cups are lined with plastic to keep them from leaking, and that plastic needs to be removed before the cups can be transformed into new paper.” (…)
Alternatively, composting cups “generates greenhouse gases while destroying the recycling value packed into the cup’s fibers. Reusable cups are a nice idea, but one that consumers simply don’t embrace.”
Called the “Good to Go” campaign, it’s a “cup-sharing system” designed “to cut down on the number of disposable cups tossed every day.” (…)
In concept, sounds very simple: “A consumer picks up a cup from one location and drops it off at another location when it’s empty — the Citi Bike of cups.”
However, Katherin Kirschenmann, chief executive of the DO School, which teaches “social entrepreneurism,” says it took some weeks for the fellows “to understand how complex” New York’s to-go and coffee culture are. [sic]
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Here’s a serious question:
What the hell has Starbucks ever done to you? Again, I’m seriously asking. Please post your answers in the comment section. I mean, I get it — they’re everywhere, and that’s kind of obnoxious — but there are twice as many Subway restaurants, right? How come no one gives a shit about that?
