Starbucks wants shareholders to vote "no" on activist group's recycling proposal

The environmental activists at the As You Sow Foundation in San Francisco are pressing Starbucks to take more steps to recycle its bottles, cans and cups and to increase the recycled content in containers. Shareholders will vote on the group's proposal at Wednesday's annual meeting. Starbucks wants them to turn it down, because it "wants to focus on things we have the ability to control." || Read "Starbucks' shareholders will vote on plan to expand company's recycling"

Comments

[Barista G]

Makes sense that Starbucks wants to move things along according to it's own agenda.
Also, it's bigger than just Starbucks. As the article state, a lot of landlords don't offer recycling. Moreover, I don't think I would ever support taking partners off the floor to transport things to a recycling center. We're strained enough as is.

[Juanitas]

I'm a shareholder and I'm absolutely voting NO...I'm not saying recycling isn't positive, yea save the world, yada-yada-yada but this will cost us money we don't have at the moment. Unless Howie takes it out of his personal pocket the answer is NO. If you would like to save our cups and wash them out at home go right ahead, it's you the consumer who is not recycling, not Starbucks. Find a place to recycle those old cups and don't just throw them in the street.

First it's guns, now recycling, can we focus on the coffee??

[mom]

i am going to say it again...the first two parts of the triangle are reduce and reuse...recycle is the last and least important...still important but we place too much emphasis on recycling

[Barista Ben]

Buy a tumbler and leave us alone!

[OverCaffeinated]

I was berated at length,just the other morning, by a customer because we don't do recycling. My first thought was that he should be making these complaints to someone higher up then me. My second thought was that if he cared so much he should start using a personal cup. Take some responsibility for your own actions, man.

[J-Ku]

Maybe it's just the City, Province, or Country I live in.........but we recycle "5 pound bullet bags, lemonade/strawberry/ and chai containers, whip cream chargers, all bottles and cans, the plastic holders from all the cup sleeves, milk jugs, soy/whip/and cream cartons, and ALL cold cups we can find/use!!!!! How can everybody still be complaining!!??!!?!

[J-Ku]

Oh yeah, and the ridiculous amount of Cardboard!!!

[unhappy planet]

And then there are all those places that pretend to recycle, and throw everything into the same trash compactor...

[Melody]

The recycling conversation irritates me just a bit. The reason is that if the consumer shifts the burdon to the corporation to take care of the environment, then they minimize their own involvement: Absolutely if you want to be green, you should bring in your own personal tumbler.

As I've often said, less than 3% of transactions (per the Shared Planet report) in 2008 included a personal cup discount. That's shockingly low, and needs to improve. Think of the millions of cup that wouldn't have to be recycled at all!

I don't remember where I heard this (I worry if I have this exactly right) but I've heard it said that partners account for 4 million papercups every year! That's a lot of cups! Think if everyone of those partners used a tumbler!

I agree Starbucks could do more to recycle, but it will never completely work without totally cooperating customers who put trash in the trash bins and not in the recycle bins, and who bring in their own cups too.

(For those following my site, it's been through a design change. Link in name).

[baristamclane]

My suggestion: increase the personal cup discount to an amount that's more than ten cents. And write up every partner who doesn't use a for-here or personal cup while on shift.

[I.Heart.Spirit]

I agree with Melody.

There is things we can be doing, but customers have to be participating too.

As for partners, I always use for-here-wear unless I make a drink for my drive home.

On a sidenote: the few people with their own cups, I would really appreciate if they would come into the store. When they come through the drive thru it seems to hold things up.

[SBG Troll]

I have three or four partner beverages every shift and I throw the cups, lids and straws right into the trash.

I throw miss-marked cups, gallon milk jugs, used bucks cards and even Izzy soda bottles away. If two lids are stuck together, one is going in the garbage.

When customers ask "Does Starbucks recycle?", I respond "Does China? Does India?"

Don't worry about what one surly barista does. If you really care, worry about the world.

[adoubleshotofclarity]

OverCaffeinated - well stated. Even with recycling bins (we used to have them in my store before the landlord took away the bin outside because the city charged too much to haul it away), I saw plenty of customers throw glass and plastic bottles in the trash because it was 5 feet closer to their exit path.

Sad as it is, there are some markets where to recycle the store partners would have to sift through the garbage every night and remove all the recyclable materials from the rubbish. Yeah, I want to do that.

It'd be great to see Starbucks offer recycling for the customers who would use it, but a lot of things need to change and that's only a small piece of the puzzle. From the article it sounds like Starbucks is trying to get everyone on board from the onset. Kudos for that.

@Melody - Great points, as always. Love your balanced, rational thoughts.

@J-Ku - Read somewhere SBUX is piloting recycling in select markets where the waste disposal infrastructure is sufficient to handle it. Glad to hear your store is doing it, and doing it well.

[A.G.]

Okay, this is a little ranty, but hopefully this will add a little perspective to your discussion:

These are pathetic rationalizations. Many indie shops, including mine, offer recycling to their customers. Who pays for it? I do. It's not just for the customers either, we recycle as much as we can: cardboard, metal, glass, plastic, etc. We also compost all of our food scraps, coffee grounds, unbleached paper, etc. We use biodegradable coffee cups, cold beverage cups, and to go boxes. Paper straws. In two months we're phasing out drinks bottled in plastic and bottled water. Instead, we're installing a system for dispensing filtered water into glasses or water bottles. We'll be foregoing the profits of the bottled water. Whenever I make one of these decisions, I think to myself, 'Well, this really only has a limited impact. We're only one, small shop, it'd be great if a chain like Starbucks did the same things.' I can think of a dozen things we could do to be slightly more profitable next week. But profit is only one part of why we are in this business. But you know what? We've been open for over ten years and we've been profitable all but one month. Our customers like our ethics, and it's part of why they choose us.

So, reading this article, seeing your responses... I think you should be ashamed. I see Starbucks doing a lot of greenwashing, but not a lot to actually mitigate their impact. To use lack of profit as an excuse? I live in a world where the consumers' price expectations are more or less set by Starbucks, yet I'm expected to compete with a vertically integrated corporation like Starbucks that sells an inferior product with cost efficiencies up the yazoo. What is the cost of a pound of roast espresso for Starbucks? You own your own tea company for chrissakes. In short, I live in a world where a fine dining restaurant is more or less expected to charge the same amount as the Appleby's in the suburbs. If I can do that and keep a roof over my head and my daughters in shoes, then you guys can damned well recycle. Stop making excuses.

[David]

The whole "green movement" is mostly corporate anyways. That is to say that if a company can't make money off of it, there's no point in doing it. Starbucks does the recycled tumbler bit because they can turn a good profit on the cups while only losing ten cents per drink (and most people forget to even bring them back in for the discount). I used to have stock in the company, and I would have voted no to this because it makes no sense, and no money in the end.

A. G., what you do with your business is up to you, but I wouldn't invest any money in a company that doesn't go for every dime. If you are throwing dreams into the wind hoping to make a difference while keeping a roof over your family's head, you aren't making any progress. Capitalism 101

[A.G.]

David, you are a bastard. And much of what I see that is wrong with this country is because people like you are bastards. My family's doing fine. Ethics and profits are not mutually exclusive.

[9mm express]

A.G. you are a bastard. Everything wrong with this country is because of you. Ethics and profits are not mutually exclusive....in a socialist utopia.

Note to SBUX: nobody wants to buy your marxist far left propaganda. Take note of the wasteland that used to be the MSM for confirmation.

[CABarista]

A.G. when people say "this is what I do, therefore it's the only way and I'm better for it" I stop listening. Personal choices do not dictate what everyone should be doing, nor do they make you better.
Running one small shop and running a corporation are two very different things. By the way, I've used biodegradable cups-they suck.
I'd rather not have my coffee all over my lap. (although, I personally use a tumbler, not the point)

[shift misto]

i think most starbucks recycle moderately on their own. more micromanagement from corporate is just going to continue f*cking up our stores already damaged flow of operations.

our store recylces quite a bit, but there is a limit. you can only hold so much crap in one store for so long until it becomes a health code violation. and unless you have one person designated to breaking down/steam melting everything recyclable all day long, tht limit is about 10 hours, then it starts pushing an ecosure violation becuase ive got bags of plastic bottles etc on my floor in the backroom, and thats not going to fly. we recycle what we can, but we have to make money and keep our store clean. which is a balance that only the actual store employees can determine, not some fat*ss at coroprate trying to look like the smart kid for a day.

[A.G.]

@9mm, so you're saying that ethics and prufits are mutually exclusive? And I'm the bastard?

@cabarista, I've been using these cups for awhile without any problems. I'm pretty sure that if they were falling apart we'd hear about it. & all I'm saying is that I don't buy these excuses. An organization that can afford free pastry days can recycle.

[Mary Davis]

Two things:

1) I thought that Starbucks paper (hot) cups were not recyclable because they are lined with a thin layer of plastic

2) At my local Starbucks, they tell customers that they hire a firm to go through the trash and pull out anything recyclable. No idea if this is for real.

[Erin]

A.G., there is a reason that I choose to be a patron at stores like yours. Thanks.

[paper cups]

It seems like Starbucks just want's to assert its own authority over the situation. How would sharholders feel if a little charity could push around a huge multi-national? Im sure it doesnt mean they dont want to recycle, just that they will do so as they see fit.

[recycling]

For those who are so concerned with this issue, they should buy a tumbler! re-using IS RECYCLING!!!