Starbucks looks to recycle 3 billion coffee cups a year
How many of us are guilty of disposing of our Starbucks coffee cup in the bin? How many of us realise that up to 3,000,000,000 Starbucks coffee cups are being wasted each year, out of a total of 200 billion paper coffee cups which are disposed of and not recycled all over the world?
The annoying thing is, especially for Starbucks, the fact that Starbucks coffee cups are already recyclable but very few people are making use of the materials available. However, Starbucks is rumoured to be in talks with various coffee cup manufacturers, recycling companies and waste managers to see how they can increase the number of Starbucks coffee cups recycled each year.
However, the company is looking to go much further than this with a suggestion that all paper coffee cups in the future will be recyclable, potentially saving 200 billion wasted paper coffee cups a year. Did you know that it is easy to recycle a batch of paper coffee cups into a pizza box within three days?
While there are many areas of business where recycling has been totally ignored it is perhaps more disappointing to see areas such as Starbucks and their coffee cups, where progress has been made in using recyclable material, but very little of it is actually recycled on an annual basis. Perhaps we may see a significant change in paper recycling in the years to come?