According to a CBS News investigation, contrary to claims, Starbucks is not consistently recycling plastic cups placed in bins at store locations. CBS News placed electronic trackers on cups at 36 locations. The survey included stores in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Dallas, Minneapolis, Chicago, Miami, Washington D.C., New York and Boston.

Fourteen cups were transferred to landfills, 13 to waste transfer stations, five to incinerators and four to Material Recovery Facilities.  Twenty-one of the tagged containers did not have reliable location information.  The study revealed that two cups deposited in New Jersey and Boston, respectively, were both transferred to a landfill in Alabama.

Jan Dell, a Chemical Engineer and Founder of The Last Beach Cleanup, a nonprofit, commented, “Starbucks is not telling the truth.”  He added, “When it comes to recycling, companies across the country and the world are lying about all those single-use plastics, claiming they are recyclable.”

In reality, only ten percent of existing Material Recovery Facilities are able to sort the plastic used for the Starbucks cup. Recycled polypropylene (# 5 plastic) has little commercial value with only KW Plastics in Alabama currently recycling the material into new plastic items.

Starbucks needs to address the issue or refrain from ‘Greenwashing’