Starbucks' cup

In David Adewumi's (2007) article, “Starbucks, local coffee shops' cups not recyclable,” he explains that Starbucks' cups are not recyclable. Nowadays we waste a lot of paper cups that are not able to recycle. The author says Starbucks customers save about 674,000 pounds if they bring their own mug. There are fully recyclable cups that are made from corn, but if Starbucks uses that cup, the price will go up, because the cups are expensive in fact. Starbucks goes through between 2 and 3 billion paper cups a year. And its cups boast 10% post-consumer recycled fiber and its sleeves are 60%. Those cups can be possible to recycle, but it is not practical actually. However Starbucks is for the first time using 10% recycled material, it is really good even if it is only 10%, because other coffee shops don't even try or even know whether they use recycled cups.

I know they try to be a good company, but I think they can try harder than what they are doing. Actually they can try to use more than 10%, they can make their price much lower if customers bring their own mug, and if it is hard to use more than 10% recycled material, they can switch to recycled cups that are made from corn.

First, I think everyone knows that 10% is too low to make the environment better. I don’t understand why just 10% material is used, because if they really think about how serious pollution is because of non-recycled cup, they would improve that. If I were CEO, I would use at least 50% recycled material. It wouldn’t make the environment better, but it wouldn’t make it worse than now.

Second, I heard that if I bring my own mug, the price goes down a little bit. It is really good to do that, but normally almost nobody does it, because the price goes down just a little bit. So I think they should make the price down more than now, or just prepare mugs for drinking inside the shop. I think it is the best way to reduce the waste of paper cups.

Third, in this article, it explained about cups that are made from corn shortly. The author says the cup can be recycled, but it is high cost. In my opinion, they have enough money to change to that cup. But I don’t know why they don’t change and they still use only the cup that includes just 10% recycled material. There are lots of Starbucks shops in every country, so their income might be incredibly a lot. But they still use paper and they pretend that they are really worried about the environment.

In conclusion, they do try what other shops don’t, but I think it is just competition, not being worried about the environment. They just want to show people, they are doing so many things for the environment. I didn’t know anything about this before I read this article, so people don’t know what problems Starbucks actually has. Everyone should know and realize, and then they should make them consider the problems they have.

Reference

Adewumi, D. (2007, September 27). Starbucks, local coffee shops’ cups not recyclable. Collegian. Portland State University. Retrieved on March 31, 2008, from http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2007/09/27/starbucks_local_coffee_shops_c.aspx