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Starbucks convenes global leaders to advance recycling
As part of Starbucks Coffee Company’s goal to ensure 100% of its cups are reusable or recyclable by 2015, it will host its third cup summit at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
In addition to convening more than 100 industry leaders to discuss cross-industry standards and solutions for the recyclability of food packaging and serveware in the US and Canada, Starbucks will host a public webinar with expert representatives from MIT, Tim Horton’s, Georgia-Pacific and Action Carting Environmental Services.
Jim Hanna, Starbucks director of environmental impact, said: “Over the past three years, we’ve learned that success has been a combination of forward-thinking partnerships along with innovative approaches to widespread challenges. By collaborating with key industry leaders, we are better able to reduce the global impact of packaging throughout the industry.”
Starbucks convened the first Cup Summit in Seattle in 2009 and the second in Boston in 2010 to find solutions to make its cups more broadly recyclable.
This year’s symposium again convened representatives from all facets of the paper and plastic cup value chain, including municipalities, raw material suppliers, cup manufacturers, retail and beverage businesses, recyclers, NGOs, and academic experts, to announce participants’ progress on action plans from the previous Cup Summits and formulate strategic actions for the upcoming year.
Since the first Summit, Starbucks has implemented recycling in 18 markets, established relationships with several municipalities and initiated three recycling pilots across the country.
Working directly with paper mills around the US and Canada, Starbucks has tested the compatibility of post-consumer cups in their paper recycling operations to create a demand for their cups from the paper and plastics industries.
Building off an idea conceived at the second Cup Summit, Starbucks and International Paper, with Mississippi River Pulp, completed a six-week pilot project that demonstrated that Starbucks used paper cups can be recycled into new paper cups.
Source: Starbucks
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