2 weeks ago
If you connect a GPS locator to a “widely recyclable” integrative Starbucks cup and driblet it successful an in-store recycling bin, you mightiness expect it to extremity up successful a recycling plant, but biology watchdog statement Beyond Plastics says that’s not nan lawsuit successful a caller report.
Starbucks announced that their integrative cups were now considered “widely recyclable” earlier this year, according to How2Recycle, a group affiliated pinch nan user packaging manufacture that helps backstage companies explanation their packaging pinch recycling options. The java elephantine touted nan accomplishment arsenic a “big milestone, pinch immense impact”.
In response, researchers and volunteers pinch Beyond Plastics, whose ngo is to “end integrative contamination everywhere”, conducted an investigation betwixt January and March 2026 to find whether nan integrative Starbucks to-go cups for acold drinks were really being recycled.
“I utilized Bluetooth-enabled trackers,” said study lead Susan Keefe. “And I glued them into nan cups utilizing Gorilla Glue and dropped them into nan existent custom-labeled recycling bins successful nan Starbucks stores. And past you tin travel them connected your phone.”
Keefe and a group of volunteers tracked 53 polypropylene integrative cups starting successful recycling bins astatine Starbucks locations crossed 9 states and Washington DC. Each recycling bin had signs intelligibly indicating these circumstantial cups could beryllium recycled. The results were stunning: not 1 cup ended up astatine a recycling facility.
Of nan 36 trackers that reached a last destination intact, nary were located astatine a recycling facility.
Instead, Beyond Plastics said 16 trackers pinged from landfills, 9 from incinerators, 8 astatine waste-transfer stations (a extremity connected nan measurement to a landfill aliases incinerator), and 3 to a materials betterment installation (which bales but not recycles plastics). The integrative cup pinch nan longest travel traveled from a Williamsburg, Brooklyn, location each nan measurement to a landfill successful Amsterdam, Ohio.
“To travel retired and conscionable say: ‘Oh, these cups are wide recyclable,’ is really deceptive,” said Keefe. “We person to judge nan truth these materials are not being recycled. They conscionable aren’t.”
Polypropylene, nan worldly utilized for single-use integrative cups astatine Starbucks and different fast-food restaurants, tin theoretically beryllium recycled into different integrative products ranging from much user bully packaging to toys. However, very fewer recycling accommodation are equipped to recycle this type of plastic. In fact, a Greenpeace report from precocious 2025 recovered only 2 commercially operating accommodation successful nan country, 1 successful Alabama and 1 successful Missouri.
“I person to ideate that Starbucks is alert of nan number of accommodation that really reprocess nan waste,” says Keefe. “Starbucks is telling group that these items are really recyclable. Well, that doesn’t really mean that recycling is happening.”
Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and a erstwhile EPA location administrator, emphasized that “accepting a integrative point for recycling is not nan aforesaid arsenic really recycling it, and nan institution knows nan difference”.
“It’s clip for Starbucks to extremity making misleading recycling claims and commencement prioritizing plastic-free, preferably reusable, alternatives for its customers,” she said.
Starbucks did not instantly respond to nan Guardian’s petition for comment.
Beyond Plastics recommends Starbucks move each integrative cups nationwide to fiber-based to-go cups and lids, and promote much reusable cup use, but astatine nan very slightest region misleading labeling connected in-store recycling bins.
“I deliberation we request to extremity talking astir integrative recyclability and really attraction connected moving distant from single-use plastic, astatine slightest for nutrient and beverage packaging,” said Keefe. “Not to mention nan truth that that integrative has chemicals successful it and each kinds of different things that are affecting our health.”
Peer-reviewed studies person repeatedly recovered that integrative discarded tin beryllium toxic to humans and lead to wellness effects including respiratory illnesses, endocrine disruption and cancer.
“I really judge that companies, erstwhile they make claims, particularly claims that are astir sustainability and mounting goals, that they should beryllium held accountable to those goals,” Keefe said. “Starbucks successful particular, I mean, they’re nan largest java concatenation successful nan world. So what they opportunity matters.”
