I found this article about Starbucks to be very interesting. By 2012, Starbucks wants to only use cups that are 100% recyclable. It states that Americans use 58 billion cups per year, which obviously adds to the thousands of tons that are forced into our landfills each year. I wasn't aware that Starbucks has already taken steps to make their paper products more environmental friendly. "In 2006, Starbucks introduced a paper cup that contained 10 percent post-consumer recycled fiber, and last year it switched from the standard PET cold cups to polypropylene cold cups, which use significantly less plastic and reduce greenhouse gas emissions during manufacturing by 45 percent." Not only will this help improve their environment, it could also potentially improve business for Starbucks. Dunkin' Donuts still uses styrofoam cups which are known to be bad for the environment. DD consumers may eventually make the turn to Starbucks if they're pro-green.
I was happy to see this article, and the many others I came across that showed how quick service restaurants are taking the extra steps to help improve our environment.
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I agree, I think it is really great that a major quick service company is trying to be more eco-friendly. It makes sense too since they use SO many cups and all of them end up in the trash! Starbucks is already a huge corporation and this will surely bring in more customers. It is also good that they are "trying to find ways to divert food and food-packaging waste away from the city’s waste stream and into recycling mills." Similarly to my article about trying to reduce trash and this will definitely make an impact.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with this article, and it was a real "eye opener" because i never knew how many cups that Americans used in one year! I really like the fact that starbucks is trying to do something to prevent more waste. If starbucks succeeds with this they will be very successful, and our world would be a better place, meaning more "eco- friendly".
ReplyDeleteI found this article interesting because they state that Starbucks' goal is not only to get Starbucks to be using completely recyclable products, but also all retail companies using these same practices. They also realize that they need to do more than just make their cups recyclable, but also help to make it easier and more accessible for consumer to recycle these products. Most people do not want to be bother to go out of their way to recycle, and this is a huge issue, so we need to find a way to make recycling easier for this to be effective.
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