Starbucks was a business model built on gourmet coffee and became successful on the premise of hand crafted coffee beverages. They were a model for both business and customer service. Instead, they have moved more and more to automated systems. This is leaving them with "push button" baristas who know little or nothing about coffee or the art of crafting beverages. While they are doing some things right-leading others in ditching styrofoam and such, I have notices that it seems to only be at the insistence of consumers. The one issue that no one seems to address is the large use of packaging for all the milk that is used by Starbuck's stores. Nearly all use 1 gallon jugs of milk which generate huge quantities of empty plastic containers. I cannot speak for the entire chain, but in all areas of the midwest (esp Ohio) that I have been in, they do not recycle any at all. There is no collection of plastic from cups or water bottles for recycling. For a company that claims to be the leader, I find it disturbing that the simple basics are ignored. The wasted water from dippers is an easy fix with the addition of a food safe sanitizer and could be implemented TODAY! In most areas a cup filled with ice water would be sufficient for health food codes.

Starbucks is a company that started a "red" program. They idea was to collect money in the form of donations to help provide AIDS drugs to Africa. However, the amount of money spent on advertising, designing new cups, designing buying and distribution of aprons, and the marketing of the program could have been all better spent in the form of a donation to provide AIDS drugs-only they would not have been able to leverage the promotion for their own image. This says to me that they are mostly concerned about the environment when it is good for their company bottom line and image building.

I will get off my soap box now.

We are an Australian based business who have approached Starbucks with a barista standard reusable cup that is designed specifically to replace disposable.

You can check it out on keepcup.com.au.

I think consumers do need to drive the change to say that disposable cups have an extremely limited application as we move forward as a global community.