Starbucks consumes almost 6 billion coffee cups that are not easy to recycle and consume wood every year. It takes about 20 years to degrade this paper cup naturally.
Starbucks once again "declared war" on the coffee cup.
Recently, Starbucks and an investment institution called "Closed Loop Partners" jointly launched a challenge to collect more easily recyclable coffee cups with prizes of up to 10 million U.S. dollars.
While looking for solutions, Starbucks is also testing a paper cup lining made of plant materials. This test has been carried out for the 13th time to see if it can prevent liquid leakage.
The reason why Starbucks attaches so much importance to coffee cups is because the current coffee cup products are not environmentally friendly.
Although most of the coffee cups used nowadays are made of cardboard, in order to maintain the temperature and prevent the cardboard from getting wet, the lining of the cup will have a layer of film. This layer of film is difficult to separate from the cardboard, making the paper cup difficult to recycle with other waste paper. Reuse. At the same time, 90% of the materials used to make Starbucks cups come from logs, and only 10% are recycled materials, resulting in a lot of waste of resources. The recycling of paper cups can only be recycled in cities with "appropriate infrastructure", such as Seattle, San Francisco, New York, and Washington, DC.
According to CNN (Cable News Network) reports, the total annual consumption of such badly recycled and wood-consuming coffee cups is about 600 billion, of which Starbucks will use almost 6 billion. It takes about 20 years for this paper cup to degrade naturally.
In recent years, a new round of environmental protection actions has also made it a trend for companies to declare environmental protection.
In February last year, the European Union announced that it would take positive action on plastic products such as disposable straws, colored plastic bottles, coffee cups, lids, disposable tableware, blenders and outer packaging. It plans to reduce the current plastic recycling rate from 30% by 2030. % Increased to 55%. This year, British Prime Minister Theresa May also stated that he plans to remove all avoidable plastic waste within 25 years. This has caused companies to state one after another to give up disposable products.
The coffee chain brand Costa announced at the beginning of this year that it would stop providing plastic straws and switch to non-plastic products; McDonald’s announced that by 2025, it will replace all product packaging with environmentally friendly packaging certified by a third-party agency and provide it in all restaurants. Environmental recycling bins; last month, Dunkin' Donuts, a doughnut and coffee chain, said it would eliminate polystyrene foam cups this spring and get rid of foam cups completely by 2020.
Starbucks, which collects 10 million eco-friendly cups, did not wait. It started charging for disposable coffee cups in more than 20 stores in London in February this year. The amount is 5 pence (about 0.45 yuan). The trial runs for 3 months. The cost will be donated to Hubbub, an environmental protection agency.
This is not the first time Starbucks has made a high-profile statement about transforming coffee cups. In 2008, Starbucks set a number of environmental goals, stating that 25% of the cups are reusable; in 2010, Starbucks promised to ensure that all cups can be reused or recycled by 2015, but these have not been achieved. .
Colin Chapman, Starbucks’s vice president of global social impact, attributed the reason to the slow development of the environmental protection industry. “No one is satisfied with the relevant industrial progress made so far,” he said. “The progress is not fast enough.”
