The increase in sales of cold drinks at Starbucks has created a problem: the increasing amount of plastic waste from the single-use cups in which Frappuccinos, Refreshers, cold drinks and other frozen drinks are served.
The coffee giant announced Thursday that it plans to reduce some of that waste with new disposable cups that contain up to 20% less plastic. The glasses will arrive in stores in the US and Canada starting this month.
Amelia Landers, Vice President of Product Innovation at Starbucks, explains that the Seattle company has spent the last four years developing the new packaging. Engineers tested thousands of iterations to see how much plastic they could remove while still making the cup stronger.
“We think it’s an industry leader,” Landers says. “It’s the best expression of a cold plastic cup.”
Starbucks says Frappuccinos and other cold drinks now make up 75% of its U.S. beverage sales, up from 37% in 2013. The company estimates the new cups will keep more than 13.5 million pounds of plastic out of landfills. every year. Producing the cups also requires less water and generates fewer carbon emissions, a major cause of climate change, he said.
Starbucks has made other changes in the redesign. The new cold glasses have raised dots near the base, so bartenders – including those with vision problems – can quickly tell with their thumb what size glass they have in their hand. And the 12-ounce cup—the “tall” size in Starbucks parlance—is shorter and wider to fit the same size lid as on the larger cups.
Landers said the new cups are part of a sustained sustainability push at Starbucks. The company adopted strawless lids in 2019. Last year, he said it would accept customer-provided cups for drive-thru and mobile orders in the United States and Canada.
The company plans to roll out a reusable cup program in thousands of stores in Europe, the Middle East and Africa by next year. Under this program, customers will pay a small deposit when purchasing a hot or cold beverage in a specially designed cup that can be used up to 30 times. Your deposit will be returned when you return the glass to the store.
Starbucks has also tested reusable cup programs in California, Arizona and Colorado.
“Each market has its own challenges, its own requirements and customer behavior. Some are more reusable-friendly, others less so,” says Landers. “There is no silver bullet for a sustainable glass.”
Long term, Starbucks has stated that it wants all of its packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2030. The reduced plastic cup making its debut is a small step toward that goal: Although the cup is recyclable, it was still designed for a use only, Landers said.
The company will continue to study ways to make single-use cups more sustainable.
“I don’t think we will ever take our foot off the accelerator, evaluating new ways and new methods and new technologies to go further,” he said. “We’re not done.”
Starbucks isn’t the only company rethinking plastic packaging. In some markets, McDonald’s has introduced plastic-topless McFlurry cups, and salad boxes and cutlery made from renewable fiber. Late last year, Coca-Cola announced that it had developed a bottle made entirely from plants. Coca-Cola manufactured a limited run of 900 bottles to demonstrate that the technology can be commercialized.
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