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Nov 28, 2010

"Just as we cannot blame others for destroying the environment, so we cannot look to others to protect the environment. Responsibility for both begins at home." --Paul Griss

The Starbucks Cup Dilemma

Eighty percent of drinks walk out of Starbucks stores. An astonishing 3 billion of the 200 billion-plus paper cups thrown into US dumps each year bear its familiar green logo. In October 2008, Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz pledged to make 100 percept of Starbucks cups recyclable by 2012. This lofty-yet-laudable goal has led Starbucks to move from solo redesign efforts to enlisting paper mills, NGOs, and municipal governments to help. Getting more cups out of the waste stream and into places like composting service Cedar Grove, though, has proven to be a lot more complicated than expected. "Think about it," writes Anya Kamenetz. "What would it take for you to never throw away another cup?"