January 17, 2013

Starbucks Takes Steps to Decrease Paper Waste

Over the years, Starbucks has demonstrated its desire to be a responsible corporation by establishing Fair Trade agreements with coffee growers around the world. Recently, the Seattle-base coffee super giant showed an interest in being more environmentally responsible as well.

The store has launched a program to help reduce the number of cups that are thrown away by its more than 14,000 stores across the U.S. and Canada. To help reduce waste, Starbucks has started selling $1 refillable cups at all of its locations and is actively inviting customers to purchase them.

In 2011, only 1.9 percent of Starbucks coffee orders were placed into reusable cups. Still, just that small percentage of refill coffee sales is estimated to have saved 34 million cups or about 1.5 million tons of paper. Even if the coffee chain can double the number of people who make use of refill cups, the paper savings can be huge.

If you frequent Starbucks or any other coffee shop, why not take your paperless kitchen philosophy on the road and make the switch to reusable cups instead of paper or Styrofoam? We invite you to take the reusable coffee cup pledge in our comments section.