Starbucks makes progress in cup recycling goal
As reported, Starbucks set an ambitious goal to ensure 100% of its cups are reusable or recyclable by 2015.
The good news is, they are making progress!
With International Paper and Mississippi River Pulp, LLC, Starbucks has finished a six-week pilot project that for the first timeproved Starbucks used paper cups can be recycled into new paper cups. So this success takes them one step closer.
Starbucks also has another recycling pilot project underway in New York. The company is collecting paper cups at 86 of its Manhattan stores (just how many do they have in Manhattan anyway?) to determine whether they can be recycled into bath tissue and paper towels.
Another recycling project is slated for 2011 in Chicago, which aims to transform the company’s discarded paper cups into napkins for use in its stores.
This past year, Starbucks began front-of-store cup collection in Toronto and Seattle, where its cups can be recycled, and in San Francisco, where its cups can be composted.
Do you know of any other interesting paper recycling initiatives? If you do, let me know!
Starbucks and Packaging Recycling
Starbucks wants its cups to be 100% recyclable by 2012. That’s a great goal for a company that uses three billion cups annually.
So Starbucks has begun to gathered stakeholders from every step in their supply chain and beyond to discuss the matter. Cup Summit included suppliers, paperboard companies, municipalities, recyclers, waste haulers, manufacturers, and environmental NGOs.
While cross-channel discussions were reportedly a big eye opener, many are skeptical, which is typical of any ambitious undertaking.
Sourcing 100% recycled paperboard is relatively easy. The key issue is related to the recycling the used cups.
Regulations are the first obstacle. Starbucks must be able to get their cups as old corrugated cardboard (OCC) so they can be recycled in the first place. That’s the basic regulatory hurdle.
Then the next obstacle is that the cups must be recyclable at the local level. The communities must first recycle, and not all do. Understand that recycling has always been a numbers game. That is, is there enough of the used material to sell it in bulk to someone who will use the material as a raw material. So even if there is a market for a material, there may not be a market near enough to make the transaction economically viable. In simple terms, low volume of a material and transportation costs (both economic and for sustainablity-minded companies, carbon footprint) may be deal breakers.
Recycling old corrugated cardboard is widespread, so getting the cups to qualify is important. But keep in mind they are contaminated by the contents. For example, you can’t recycle pizza boxes because of the grease and cheese residue. On disposal, Starbucks’ cups held or still hold, coffee, tea, milk, sugar and other toppings which could preclude recycling.
This segues to the real elephant in the room (pardon my mixing of metaphors throughout), Starbucks’ customers. Most cups leave by the front door or the drive through and how do you control them? Influencing guest actions has been a real bugbear for amusement parks and hotels because even if these organizations provide recycling containers, they aren’t often used properly and often the recyclable material is tossed in the trash receptacle anyway.
So it’s very tough for organizations whose guests operate within their boundaries, but like I said, most Starbucks cups leave the premises and end up far from Starbucks’ control.
From where I sit, the initiative deserves credit. It’s ambitious, it’s worthwhile and to succeed it must be a game changer. Like Gazelle, this is one project I’ll be following going forward.
What do you think? Is the project feasible? What would have to change? Let me know!
Trash Tracking at MIT
I can see it now, Trash Trackers, will be a new TV show on Discovery Channel. Ostensibly, It’ll be a half hour, but with all the foreshadoing and recap, it’ll actually be only 12 minutes of actual content. Those shows crack me up.
But the guys at MIT really are tracking trash. They say they want to educate people about consequences of their consumerism. But really, what good will come from knowing that your Starbucks cup takes 30 hours to reach the landfill?
On the other hand, putting GPS tags on trash is a great way to hold your waste management vendor’s feet to the fire. Here is what’s appealing. You can follow your roll off containers and compactors and see if your trash is is really going to where your hauler’s rep says it’s going. Some landfills are closer to your shop, others more distant, some have cheaper tipping fees than others. With this GPS tracking idea, you can “trust, but verify” that your trash is going to the closest and cheapest landfill so that your waste hauling invoices are as low as possible.
Don’t think this happens? It does. I have heard plenty of stories from my peers about the rolloff driver turning left out of the gate, instead of right and the client pays for that bigtime. I mean who you gonna have at your plant shadowing the garbage truck? Other than your waste consultant, that is.
