Global Green USA‘s Coalition for Resource Recovery just announced that seven Starbucks stores in Manhattan will be participating in a new pilot program spearheaded by CoRR and aimed at reducing the number of paper cups that end up in U.S. landfills.
Currently, 58 billion paper cups are used in restaurants, events and homes in the U.S. each year. According to a Global Green press release, “If all paper cups in the U.S. were recycled, 645,000 tons of waste would be diverted from landfills each year, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2.5 million mtCO2e, equivalent to removing 450,000 passenger cars from the road.”
Right now, landfills are the final resting place for three billion Starbucks coffee cups annually. The polyethylene coating that lines and seals the inner cup makes the perfectly repulpable paper non-recyclable. However, for the pilot, Western Michigan University’s Coating and Recycling Pilot Plants tested Starbucks coffee cups and designated them as OCC-E, meaning they meet the same recycling and repulping standard as old corrugated cardboard. Meanwhile Duro Bag, the biggest global paper bag manufacturer, is creating a special paper bin liner so that the cups can be effortlessly collected and recycled along with corrugated cardboard.
According to Annie White, director of Global Green’s Coalition for Resource Recovery, “The lessons learned from the cup recycling pilot can be applied to the recycling of hamburger, pizza, French fry containers, and all sorts of paper food packaging. If the initial pilot is successful, CoRR will expand the pilot to encompass more packaging types and restaurants, furthering our objective of generating business value and closing the loop on packaging.”
A small step for man, and a giant leap for humankind? No doubt. In an age boasting the technology to sustain human life in space on months-long missions, that we haven’t yet eliminated landfills or created a sustainable paper cup is an amazing thought. Starbucks’ participation in the project is part of the coffee giant’s ongoing initiative — announced in October 2009 — to develop a recyclable coffee cup by 2012. Results from the pilot – designed to create a sustainable, zero waste New York City – will be available in November.
Photo courtesy Starbucks.
