Starbucks and environment

In Melanie Warner’s (2004) article, “Starbucks continues to Greenwash with Weak Environmental Policy,” she explains that Star bucks will use recycled cups, but just 10% of its material. Many people say that 10% is too little, but Starbucks uses more than 1 billion cups each year, so it costs too much to switch to recycled cups. Some places have switched but some other companies have not changed yet, because of cost. Starbucks decided to visit FDA and then Starbucks received approval from FDA.

I don’t think Starbucks really cares about environment actually, because I think they earn enough to switch to recycled cups. And also in Korea we have Starbucks, but if we drink inside they give me what I order in a mug cup, so they reduce the waste of cups. Starbucks has 10% recycled cups, but they don’t care if customers give cups back.

First, I believe that Starbucks earns a lot nowadays as everyone knows. But I don’t understand why they care about money too much to change recycled cups. I just think negatively, because I believe they don’t care whether the environment is destroyed or not. I mean they just do that because they want to show us that Starbucks is really worried about environment in a commercial. If they really are worried, they ought to switch more than 10%.

Second, Starbucks in the USA never uses mug cups when customers drink inside. If they used them, they would have been able to reduce a lot the amount of cups. I don’t know why they use just plastic cups. In Korea there are also many Starbucks there, but we have already changed to mug cups for people who drink inside Starbucks. They don’t produce any paper in Korea, so we did need to change. Here they need to change as soon as possible.

Third, in fact people who are working in Starbucks now never care about whether customers give back cups. They need to explain why they need to give back exactly. But nobody does it now, so even if I drink coffee in a recycled cup, I just throw the cup away. It is the most important thing that they need to explain to customers when they give customers what they order on recycled cups.

In my opinion there are too many problems in Starbucks, but they still don’t realize what the problems are. They need to switch more cups, and they need mug cups for customers who drink inside. And they need to tell and explain why they need to receive cups.

Reference

Warner, M. (2004, November 17). Starbucks continues to Greenwash with Weak Environmental Policy. New York Times News Service. Organic Consumers Association. Retrieved on March 26, 2008, from http://www.organicconsumers.org/starbucks/recycle.cfm