SEATTLE — Starbucks is set to trial a selection of greener cup solutions in select cities around the world.
Starbucks customers in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver and London will help test a number of different cups that will be both recyclable and compostable in those municipalities’ facilities.
The cup technologies being tested are winning submissions from the NextGen Cup Challenge, which was issued by the NextGen Consortium — a partnership with Closed Loop Partners comprised of founding partners Starbucks and McDonald’s, as well as other industry stakeholders. The consortium strives to work with municipalities to increase acceptance of these new paper cups in recycling and composting programs by showing their value and ability to be recovered and diverted from landfills.
This initiative is part of Starbucks’ larger journey to minimize the company’s environmental footprint, which includes a goal made in 2016 to double the recycled content, recyclability and the reusability of its cups by 2022.
“It is with great intention that we move forward with highly collaborative and innovative work to bring both recyclable and compostable cups to scale around the world,” says Kevin Johnson, president and CEO of Starbucks. “We’re reimagining the future for Starbucks — and for the more than 30,000 communities we serve each day — with a great sense of responsibility for a more sustainable planet.”
Starbucks will also roll out new lightweight, recyclable strawless lids to all stores in the U.S. and Canada in the next year as it works to eliminate plastic straws from its stores by 2020. The redesigned strawless lids will roll out this summer to Starbucks locations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., Indianapolis and Toronto, while the rest of the U.S. and Canada will receive them by early 2020. The company is also testing alternative material straws and exploring some of the winning NextGen technologies that could apply to straws.
