NEW YORK CITY, NY — Starbucks launched a pilot program in seven New York stores last week that could help the company move toward its goal of making all of its coffee cups recyclable by 2012.
Starbucks and Global Green USA's Coalition for Resource Recovery will use the program to examine the collection and recycling of the coffee cups while in the same waste stream as old corrugated cardboard (OCC). Results will be announced in November.
"The lessons learned from the cup recycling pilot can be applied to the recycling of hamburger, pizza, and French fry containers, and all sorts of other paper food packaging," Annie White, Coalition for Resource Recovery (CoRR) director, said in a statement. "If the initial pilot is successful, CoRR will expand the pilot to encompass more packaging types and restaurants, furthering our objective of generating business value and closing the loop on packaging."
Three billion Starbucks coffee cups end up in landfills every year, in large part because they can't be composted or recycled in most communities because of a thin polyethylene plastic coating that prevents liquid leakage.
Although they typically aren't being processed to their highest value, Western Michigan University's Coating and Recycling Pilot Plant certified the cups to be as recyclable and repulpable based on the Fibre Box Association's Wax Alternative Protocol. They will be collected in special paper bin liners along with OCC and sent to Pratt Industries, where they will be compared to existing feedstock for recyclability and repulpability.
The company announced its 2012 goal in October 2009 before 10,000 baristas. The company first debuted a cup made with recycled content in 2004, a version with 10 percent recycled materials which took two years to develop and required approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. At the time the company said the new cups would reduce its dependence on tree fiber by more than five million pounds annually.
Images of Starbucks coffee cups CC licensed by Flickr user powerbooktrance
People should just bring
People should just bring their own cups or use Starbucks' "for here" cups - it's really not that hard! Check out the EcoPlum blog where we encourage these types of changes in habits: http://www.ecoplum.com/blog/2009/08/09/welcome/
recycling
Hi Stephanee-- Recycling may be a good option, but my thought was that it tends to take a lot of energy to go through the recycling process, and the quality of the material is lost pretty rapidly (the paper might be to weak to recycle into a new cup more than once). Compostable cups are already available today, too, which is great. I think the problem with them is that most cities don't have good composting programs set up yet. It seems like it would be good for Starbucks to support composting because there's more they could use it for (coffee grounds, other food waste, napkins, etc).
Stephanee
Kirsten - Agree that reusable is the best option but why is compostable better than recycling? Recycling provides post-consumer content to replace virgin content. Some paper goods will always nee dot be made...like toilet paper...and best to use post-consumer materials. Recycling and composting both close the loop.
Compostable cups better
Some coffee chains are using compostable cups-- I'd love to see Starbucks work to get the infrastructure in place to support that instead. Or require everyone to bring reusable cups. :)