Coffee Cup Woes: Starbucks’ Environmental Sustainability Challenge

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In 2013, the world’s largest coffee chain, Starbucks Coffee Company (Starbucks), introduced a US$1 reusable cup in its stores in the US and Canada and later on, in the UK. The company came up with the idea of a plastic reusable cup to reduce its environmental footprint as it often faced criticism from environmental enthusiasts for generating 4 billion single-serve cups as trash each year that ended up in landfills or as litter. Starbucks also offered a 10 cent discount on the drink every time the customer used the reusable cup in its store.

One of the most pressing challenges before the world’s largest coffee chain, and more specifically Hanna, was to solve the problem caused by the branded trash it generated each year. Hanna contended that the 4 billion cups it generated as waste each year was a small percentage of the 500 billion cups generated globally, and it represented a “sliver” of Starbucks’ environmental footprint.

Starbucks had taken various initiatives over the years to address the issue of the cup, but these had had limited impact. In 2008, the company had taken up the target of making 100% of its cups recyclable by 2015, and serving 25% of beverages made in its company-operated stores in personal cups by 2015. Though the company had been offering the 10 cent discount to customers who brought along their own cups since the 1980s, only a small fraction of customers availed of the offer. In 2012, the company was forced to reduce the target of serving beverages in personal cups to 5% by 2015 as it was able to achieve less than 2%.

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