Global Green News
Starbucks' Cup Summit: Does the Cost of Recycling Runneth Over?
GREENBIZ.COM. MAY 15, 2009. By Scott Seydel
Starbucks' Ben Packard, the vice president of Global Responsibility, and his running mate, Jim Hanna, the director of Environmental Impact, think so -- and they invited 30 cup, cupstock and coating manufacturers, recyclers, waste managers and university researchers to Seattle this week to have a chat about it.
The experts were matched up with an equal number of Starbucks professionals in sessions that included a talk led by CEO Howard Schultz. From Monday's opening reception and dinner through the next full day at SBUX headquarters, every aspect of the iconic coffee cup was discussed as if the subject was "the beans."
Three billion of the world's 200 billion-plus paper cups that start as trees and end up at the dump each year bear the Starbucks logo, and Packard and Hanna are taking on the responsibility to fulfill the promise Schultz made to 10,000 baristas who met in New Orleans last October: All the company's iconic coffee cups will be recyclable by 2012.
Experts, who agree on the premise, have already begun examining ways to knock down barriers to reaching the goal, and some very interesting facts are emerging in the process.
Joel Kendrick, Western Michigan University's director of Paper & Coating facilities, reported that his laboratory has conducted preliminary trials indicating that many paper coffee cups in today's market are readily repulpable and recyclable.
Kendrick applied the Fibre Box Association's wax alternative protocol procedures to several of these cups and found some, including the familiar Starbucks cup, are certifiably recyclable under the industry-approved standard. "We believe recyclability can be determined in a certified lab and thus divert many thousands of tons of usable fiber from going to landfills," said Kendrick.
Annie White, who directs Global Green's Coalition for Resource Recovery (CoRR), co-authored a white paper with Kendrick detailing how spent cups and food packaging certified as OCC (old corrugated cardboard) grade could hitch a free ride to recycling mills if source separated. Dick Lilly, business area manager for waste prevention at Seattle's Public Utilities, reported that Starbucks' hot beverage cups (among others) are already considered recyclable and are recycled as paper in Seattle. Thus recyclers may be receptive to CoRR's cup and cartonstock certification program, if it serves to upgrade that recyclability from "mixed paper" to "OCC equivalent."
CoRR's current program will facilitate collection of spent cups from a representative number of Starbucks shops in Manhattan and utilize the city's efficient OCC collection/distribution systems to deliver them to Pratt Industries' recycling plant on Staten Island.
"Receptacles that are fitted with special paper liners will be provided for consumer use to collect spent cups, and those paper sacks will be bound in the OCC bundles that are daily shipped to the Pratt plant," said White. "Within 72 hours after being discarded, the cups collected in this demonstration program will be component in linerboard used to form New York's take-out pizza boxes."
North America accounts for almost 60 percent of the more than 220 billion paper cups used each year around the world.
Though not a principal topic of the cup summit, Starbucks has recently lightweighted its cups for iced and frozen drinks by switching to polypropylene plastics from polyethylene terephthalate, according to Amanda Holder, the sustainable packaging supervisor for Berry Plastics. Future cold cup recycling opportunities for the reclaimed polypropylene could serve existing markets for tufted carpet scrim, clothes hangers, or lotion and cosmetic bottles.
As the summit drew to a close, attendees affirmed their confidence that Starbucks leadership in community, individual, societal and associate issues, as well as the company's ability to maintain personal relationships with customers, give it leverage to initiate a movement that will make beverage and food packaging recyclable in form and practice across the industry.
