If you dont like the idea of tossing your cup, and you're staying at the store to finish your drink, you can ask for it in a ceramic mug ("to stay", or "for here") instead of a disposable cup.
Excellent article, touching on all the things Starbucks is doing, the complexities at the system level, and the fuzziness of their goals (for example no numerical targets). For me this was the top-level takeaway:
"The complexity dissipates, apparently, when you have the law on your side. Only 5% of Starbucks stores currently recycle cups, and that's mainly in places like Seattle, San Francisco, and Ontario, where it's required by law."
I don't want to start an environmental flame war, but...
Isn't the disposal of inert materials in landfills one of the lease important environmental problems? Yes, if you're cutting down rain forests to make your cups, infusing them with CFCs, or using terrawatts of fossil-fuel-based power, then there are issues to discuss. But if you're just putting paper in a big pile somewhere, there's basically no issue. For all intents and purposes, our space for landfills is unlimited.
Could someone fill me in on any aspect of this I'm not considering?
Well, if we were recycling all our current paper based waste then less rain forests would have to be cut down to keep up with demand.
Have been thinking about advertising catalogues you get in the mail and phone books as well today, both products that use a lot of paper for marginal benefit these days.
You are coming at it from the wrong angle. The disposal of inert materials in a landfill is trivial. The problem is that we are disposing of otherwise useful materials, in a landfill. If I'm putting paper in a big pile of paper, and not using it for anything, I'm wasting resources, I could use that big pile of paper for something else.
Landfills can also be a problem, as they can have negative effects on things like local water quality. If we are using landfill space when we don't need to use it (things that are inert and recyclable), it is a waste of landfill space, which we should try to minimize and use for things that actually need to be disposed of safely.
Granted, it is Wikipedia, and I'd welcome data to back up your point, but other sources seem to say similar things. Barring a great internet hippie recycling conspiracy, I'd say you are wrong.
The article seems to be focused on the idea of composting the cups anyway.
Paper in the ground is the opporite of CO2 sequestering because you had to cut down a TREE to make that paper. A living tree is, by definition, a CO2 sequestering machine.
Also, throwing paper and organic matter into modern landfills, which promote anaerobic breakdown, produces methane. As you know, methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
Just to make Ars's point clear: the equilibium state of a forest is carbon neutral. Trees absorb carbon as they grown, then release it after death as they decay. Compared to an empty field, creating a forest stores a fixed, one-shot amount of carbon (however much carbon is in the trees at a given time); it is not a sequestering machine. If you could replace the forest with landfill which was inert and held more carbon in the form of paper than the forest, this would give a net decrease in atmospheric carbon.
Obviously, there are issues of decreased species diversity, chemical leaching, etc., when replacing a forest with a landfill that this account doesn't consider.
Assuming the decay from paper-cup-watse -> CO2-and-other-greenhouse-gases is very slow (compared to the regrowth time for a tree) then cutting down trees, turning them into paper cups, and burying the cups is an excellent carbon-sequestering tool.
Compare the two approaches:
(1) don't cut the tree == one tree-worth of carbon sequestered (as the tree matures its carbon-weight does not grow as quickly)
(2) cut down a tree 5 times in 20 years and create 5 trees-worth of cups and put them in a landfill == 5-trees of landfill carbon + 1 immature tree of carbon (more realistically probably not 6x but 2x-3x)
Only young growing trees absorb much CO2, paper cups are made from farmed plantations of young fast growing trees.
The best thing (from a CO2 point of view) would be to cut down old growth hardwood rain-forest and plant pine saplings which you then cut down and make into cups which you bury!
ps Actually about 75% of CO2 is absorbed by algea, it's the oceans that make oxygen not rainforests
> The problem is that we are disposing of otherwise useful materials, in a landfill. If I'm putting paper in a big pile of paper, and not using it for anything, I'm wasting resources, I could use that big pile of paper for something else.
I believe this thinking is very flawed if it's used to justify extra-market laws or consumer boycotts. (If it's not being so used, then you're basically just saying "In accordance with market principles, Starbucks is trying to increase share-holder value by finding value in it's waste products. I approve.").
How do you decide if something is "wasted" other than with economic cost-benefit analysis? If there was an economical way to use it, we would (or will, once we have the technology). I'm all for entrepreneurs finding new ways to utilize waste products. And, in fact, such entrepreneurs enjoy huge advantages in the market place because many people have not-quite-rational feelings about "waste".
In other words: where is the market failure which is significant compared to the failures associated with carbon emissions, CFCs, etc.?
I ate half my dinner and threw it away instead of putting it in a tupper-ware.
I wasted food. (There are starving people in x country)
I malloc a gigabyte of memory and don't do anything with it.
I wasted memory. (but you should see what a memory hog Photoshop is, it hardly matters).
I cut down a bunch of trees, and turn them into paper.
I then put the paper in a big pile and don't do anything with it.
I wasted paper. (I had to cut down more trees, instead of reusing the ones I already cut down).
I turned that into waste, which need not be.
How does economic cost-benefit analysis and share-holder value even factor into this? The fact is that we have the technology to do this, it reduces our need to cut down and process timbre, and reduces environmental impact of our consumption (and in doing so helps survival of future generations). 'The market' is incredibly short sighted in terms of planning for our future. Ethically, we should conserve resources.
> I ate half my dinner and threw it away instead of putting it in a tupper-ware.
>How does economic cost-benefit analysis...even factor into this?
Suppose we lived in a universe where tupper-ware containers cost $X and there was no cheaper substitute.
If $X = $1 million, you would just throw the left-overs away. If $X = $0, you would save them. How would you decide if it's morally necessary to use tuppaware for arbitrary X without a cost-benefit analysis?
(The answer probably depends on factors other than just the cost X. For the sake of moral clarity, suppose that the cost was derived purely from paying people to build the tupperware. The people who are building them consume resources like all people do, but the actual construction of the tupperware requires no inputs other than labor.)
Suppose we lived in a universe with a limited amount of food.
Every time you make food, there is slightly less food available in the future.
(It is kind of a function where some of it gets replaced, but not all of it, so as you proceed, the function approaches an infinitesimal number).
At what point on that timeline does the finiteness of the food outweigh the cost of a tupper-ware?
It seems that the answer would be right at the beginning, because the sooner we start conserving the food, the longer we would be able to sustain our supply.
If I had $1 million for the tupperware, I would pay it, because it is a matter of longterm survival vs. money.
> If I had $1 million for the tupperware, I would pay it, because it is a matter of longterm survival vs. money.
No you wouldn't. You could have eaten gruel today for breakfast, but you didn't.
Unless you're really going to bite that bullet (that survival is the only morally valuable thing, so no one is allowed any non-survival-promoting fun) then you need to allow that other things, like happiness, are important. In particular, you need to allow for people to sacrifice some future survival (i.e. waste) for some happiness in some cases.
How would you determine when this is OK? A cost-benefit analysis...
If I had data that told me we were running out of food, come hell or high water, I'd find some way to conserve it.
I had strawberry yogurt for breakfast.
I had it because it tastes good, and is relatively good for me. I could have gone with the cheap plain yogurt, but instead I had the slightly tastier more expensive stuff, on the chance that it is actually healthier and tastier.
But the morality of my breakfast isn't at question here.
(I could be totally amoral and still make a good argument for what should be done).
I never said there wasn't an element of cost-benefit analysis, I said that it (waste specifically) wasn't a purely economic cost-benefit analysis (which is what was argued initially). It seems that you are agreeing with me, as you have 'allowed' for other things like 'happiness'. (Which would be an emotional cost-benefit analysis).
It makes me happy to think that future generations will be able to enjoy the things that I enjoy currently.
According to the WWF (http://www.worldwildlife.org/sites/TED/change.html) it takes 53 gallons of water to make 1 latte. A great deal of this water is used in making the cup. So why use all that water for a product that gets trashed?
We use water for lots of things. Why are we focusing on the cup? There are much better places to conserve water.
Crop irrigation, and getting rid of septic systems would be where I would start. Don't grow crops in places where you need to irrigate (or at least reduce it), and septic systems waste water, instead of recycling it like a sewer does.
The cost of 1 gallon of water is something like 1/100th of a cent in most areas. If you want people to conserve water increase its cost, anything else and it will just be "wasted" somewhere else.
If you design systems to have a one-way flow of materials, they are inherently unsustainable. At some point, you'll run out of source materials and/or space to put waste.
Polystyrene foam (styrofoam) is an extremely recyclable material. I don't think many people have access to recycling facilities though. Interesting problem!
EDIT:
Another thought: aluminum. It's expensive and highly recyclable. Another benefit is that you have a small army of homeless picking the streets clean of the valuable metal. Can't find a recycling bin? Just toss it in the gutter! It'll find it's way.
I wonder why they don't come up with a cheap, washable cup that the customers 'borrow' for the duration of drinking coffee. You buy a coffee for 3 bucks, you get the cup for a dollar, and you get a dollar back when you return the cup. They wash the cup and use it again. It would be like getting it 'for here', but you give some collateral against the price of the cup, and can leave.
There are enough Starbucks within the US that returning the cup wouldn't be much of a hassle (might even be good for repeat business).
Or make it compulsory to bring your own cup, which they also sell in store if you don't yet have a suitable one.
This would be great but given the competitive nature of the industry would only work in certain locations where people are more environmentally conscious.
Yes. They also had the carts locked up so you needed to deposit a quarter (which you got back by locking your cart up again), didn't take credit cards (only debit/cash), and didn't have name-brand anything.
It worked fine, except that their bread would often start to grow mold by the time we were maybe two-thirds through a loaf (which doesn't seem to happen with bread from other stores). We'd probably still go there for other things, except that we always need bread and going to two separate stores is annoying.
In general, I don't think it would work in many places in Australia either. People have grown to comfortable with consuming and are unable to see real consequences on any time frame that matters to them.
The market will eventually sort this out, but not before it is far to later.
Recently I have encouraged to know that many people pay the green electricity surcharge, which means you are subsidizing more green sources of power being integrated into the grid, I'd assumed that they would have a really low uptake on that kind of thing.
To go even further, this should be a mandated policy city by city. And it should be a blanket policy that applies to any hot beverage being sold. Just like a shopping bag.
1. All shops serving hot beverages require a mug. The mug may be purchased at any shop covered by the policy, or otherwise bring your own. Warning about 'Caution, Hot Beverage inside!' become moot. Your cup , your problem.
2. Purchased mug is sold at small profit and first fill-up is free or whatever incentive to purchase the liquid additionally with the mug.
3. Purchases that use a refillable mug, get a 5% discount during phase-in.
4. Shops do not offer to charge extra for the disposable cups. If available, this lazy option would give a choice that leaves them justified in being lazy, and creates a sort of contract that they still contribute to the greater good.
5. Add a creative incentive that allows purchasers to add value to this activity. Marketers can add to this.
6. Make all these mugs as easy to wash and as durable as possible. Non-toxic, non-breakable, easy to wash. No problem.
7. People love to drink coffee/tea in their cars. There's an another possible angle to create a cross-incentive
I wonder if health liability doesn't drive this, at least partially. Also, do Starbucks have dish washing facilities currently? That adds a lot of space to the footprint of their small stores (It looks to me as though Starbucks can currently just about be run out of a hallway). I'm not trying to be critical of the approach, I think it's great, it just seems like there might be some nontrivial costs to implementing it.
You can get your coffee in a ceramic mug (I have only ever been in European Starbucks but it would seem weird if that’s not a worldwide thing.) so they must have some sort of dish washing capability.
About a year or so ago, Microsoft's campuses made a huge switch from all plastic cups/silverware to compostable materials. Silverware/cups literally made out of corn and potatoes and such. A common question was "why doesn't MS just give each employee a ceramic mug?" The response was that MS found it's actually more environmentally damaging to wash them than it is to compost a crap load of cups. I found that response interesting. I'm not claiming that response was true (it might have just been compostable cups were cheaper for MS). But I am often surprised to find intuition and the environment don't always go hand in hand.
That's true for hand washed mugs. Running your coffee cup under the hot tap in the kitchen uses vastly more energy than making a paper one or cleaning batches of cups in an industrial dishwasher.
Best alternative is my coffee cup that I have black coffee (no milk or sugar) and I refill but never wash. Gradually the layer of coffee tar on the inside exchanges with the fresh coffee.
It's also pretty hygienic, nobody else ever borrows my mug, and nothing can live on the layer of caffeine sludge.
Yes, our obsession with cleanliness/newness is one of the major culprits in our piles of waste. And to think we once lived amongst each other with communal drinking cups at the water fountain...
Starbucks and Tim Hortons already do this in Canada, but without the need for a deposit. In fact, I believe they give you larger portions if you say you wanted your coffee "for here".
This is the solution. Disposable shit is bad, period. They could also reward customers with $0.50 off (or whatever) their purchase for bringing in their own cup. They can retrofit their machines to charge only for the amount of liquid dispensed into the cup (instead of having only 3 sizes), and throw marketing dollars at the whole thing.
Bridgehead, a local coffee shop here in Ottawa, claims their cups are 100% compostable. Assuming that's true, why doesn't Starbucks just switch to these cups? I didn't notice any different in quality.
Could some unfortunate soul who had the misfortune of reading this entire article please summarize it in 3, possibly 4 sentences for us of a weaker constitution?
52 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 60.4 ms ] thread"The complexity dissipates, apparently, when you have the law on your side. Only 5% of Starbucks stores currently recycle cups, and that's mainly in places like Seattle, San Francisco, and Ontario, where it's required by law."
Isn't the disposal of inert materials in landfills one of the lease important environmental problems? Yes, if you're cutting down rain forests to make your cups, infusing them with CFCs, or using terrawatts of fossil-fuel-based power, then there are issues to discuss. But if you're just putting paper in a big pile somewhere, there's basically no issue. For all intents and purposes, our space for landfills is unlimited.
Could someone fill me in on any aspect of this I'm not considering?
Have been thinking about advertising catalogues you get in the mail and phone books as well today, both products that use a lot of paper for marginal benefit these days.
In fact almost nothing is made from rain forest trees. They are usually cut down to use the land, not for the trees.
Rain forests are cut down to clear land for farming in developing countries, not for wood.
The less you have the more you should think about doing things right.
Landfills can also be a problem, as they can have negative effects on things like local water quality. If we are using landfill space when we don't need to use it (things that are inert and recyclable), it is a waste of landfill space, which we should try to minimize and use for things that actually need to be disposed of safely.
Putting paper in the ground is excellent from a CO2 sequestering point of view as well.
Granted, it is Wikipedia, and I'd welcome data to back up your point, but other sources seem to say similar things. Barring a great internet hippie recycling conspiracy, I'd say you are wrong.
The article seems to be focused on the idea of composting the cups anyway.
Paper in the ground is the opporite of CO2 sequestering because you had to cut down a TREE to make that paper. A living tree is, by definition, a CO2 sequestering machine.
Also, throwing paper and organic matter into modern landfills, which promote anaerobic breakdown, produces methane. As you know, methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
The best thing is to grow them, then cut them down and bury them in a way that prevents them from decomposing.
As for methane, only a small amount of the organic matter turns into methane, plus while methane may be potent, it doesn't last long.
Obviously, there are issues of decreased species diversity, chemical leaching, etc., when replacing a forest with a landfill that this account doesn't consider.
Compare the two approaches:
(1) don't cut the tree == one tree-worth of carbon sequestered (as the tree matures its carbon-weight does not grow as quickly)
(2) cut down a tree 5 times in 20 years and create 5 trees-worth of cups and put them in a landfill == 5-trees of landfill carbon + 1 immature tree of carbon (more realistically probably not 6x but 2x-3x)
ps Actually about 75% of CO2 is absorbed by algea, it's the oceans that make oxygen not rainforests
I believe this thinking is very flawed if it's used to justify extra-market laws or consumer boycotts. (If it's not being so used, then you're basically just saying "In accordance with market principles, Starbucks is trying to increase share-holder value by finding value in it's waste products. I approve.").
How do you decide if something is "wasted" other than with economic cost-benefit analysis? If there was an economical way to use it, we would (or will, once we have the technology). I'm all for entrepreneurs finding new ways to utilize waste products. And, in fact, such entrepreneurs enjoy huge advantages in the market place because many people have not-quite-rational feelings about "waste".
In other words: where is the market failure which is significant compared to the failures associated with carbon emissions, CFCs, etc.?
I ate half my dinner and threw it away instead of putting it in a tupper-ware.
I wasted food. (There are starving people in x country)
I malloc a gigabyte of memory and don't do anything with it.
I wasted memory. (but you should see what a memory hog Photoshop is, it hardly matters).
I cut down a bunch of trees, and turn them into paper. I then put the paper in a big pile and don't do anything with it.
I wasted paper. (I had to cut down more trees, instead of reusing the ones I already cut down).
I turned that into waste, which need not be.
How does economic cost-benefit analysis and share-holder value even factor into this? The fact is that we have the technology to do this, it reduces our need to cut down and process timbre, and reduces environmental impact of our consumption (and in doing so helps survival of future generations). 'The market' is incredibly short sighted in terms of planning for our future. Ethically, we should conserve resources.
>How does economic cost-benefit analysis...even factor into this?
Suppose we lived in a universe where tupper-ware containers cost $X and there was no cheaper substitute.
If $X = $1 million, you would just throw the left-overs away. If $X = $0, you would save them. How would you decide if it's morally necessary to use tuppaware for arbitrary X without a cost-benefit analysis?
(The answer probably depends on factors other than just the cost X. For the sake of moral clarity, suppose that the cost was derived purely from paying people to build the tupperware. The people who are building them consume resources like all people do, but the actual construction of the tupperware requires no inputs other than labor.)
Every time you make food, there is slightly less food available in the future.
(It is kind of a function where some of it gets replaced, but not all of it, so as you proceed, the function approaches an infinitesimal number).
At what point on that timeline does the finiteness of the food outweigh the cost of a tupper-ware?
It seems that the answer would be right at the beginning, because the sooner we start conserving the food, the longer we would be able to sustain our supply.
If I had $1 million for the tupperware, I would pay it, because it is a matter of longterm survival vs. money.
No you wouldn't. You could have eaten gruel today for breakfast, but you didn't.
Unless you're really going to bite that bullet (that survival is the only morally valuable thing, so no one is allowed any non-survival-promoting fun) then you need to allow that other things, like happiness, are important. In particular, you need to allow for people to sacrifice some future survival (i.e. waste) for some happiness in some cases.
How would you determine when this is OK? A cost-benefit analysis...
I had strawberry yogurt for breakfast. I had it because it tastes good, and is relatively good for me. I could have gone with the cheap plain yogurt, but instead I had the slightly tastier more expensive stuff, on the chance that it is actually healthier and tastier.
But the morality of my breakfast isn't at question here. (I could be totally amoral and still make a good argument for what should be done).
I never said there wasn't an element of cost-benefit analysis, I said that it (waste specifically) wasn't a purely economic cost-benefit analysis (which is what was argued initially). It seems that you are agreeing with me, as you have 'allowed' for other things like 'happiness'. (Which would be an emotional cost-benefit analysis).
It makes me happy to think that future generations will be able to enjoy the things that I enjoy currently.
Glad to have changed your mind.
Please Recycle.
There are far far far more important goals than recycling or composting paper.
Crop irrigation, and getting rid of septic systems would be where I would start. Don't grow crops in places where you need to irrigate (or at least reduce it), and septic systems waste water, instead of recycling it like a sewer does.
http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2007/04/semiconductors.htm... Note: $27 per acre-foot = 0.008 cents per gallon.
EDIT: Another thought: aluminum. It's expensive and highly recyclable. Another benefit is that you have a small army of homeless picking the streets clean of the valuable metal. Can't find a recycling bin? Just toss it in the gutter! It'll find it's way.
What about glass?
There are enough Starbucks within the US that returning the cup wouldn't be much of a hassle (might even be good for repeat business).
It just doesn't work (for us Americans at least).
It worked fine, except that their bread would often start to grow mold by the time we were maybe two-thirds through a loaf (which doesn't seem to happen with bread from other stores). We'd probably still go there for other things, except that we always need bread and going to two separate stores is annoying.
The market will eventually sort this out, but not before it is far to later.
Recently I have encouraged to know that many people pay the green electricity surcharge, which means you are subsidizing more green sources of power being integrated into the grid, I'd assumed that they would have a really low uptake on that kind of thing.
They have build a half cozen in my area in the past few years so I figure they cannot be doing that poorly...
As someone else mentioned: They also make you pay a $.25 deposit to use a shopping cart, don't take credit cards, and don't offer name-brand anything.
1. All shops serving hot beverages require a mug. The mug may be purchased at any shop covered by the policy, or otherwise bring your own. Warning about 'Caution, Hot Beverage inside!' become moot. Your cup , your problem.
2. Purchased mug is sold at small profit and first fill-up is free or whatever incentive to purchase the liquid additionally with the mug.
3. Purchases that use a refillable mug, get a 5% discount during phase-in.
4. Shops do not offer to charge extra for the disposable cups. If available, this lazy option would give a choice that leaves them justified in being lazy, and creates a sort of contract that they still contribute to the greater good.
5. Add a creative incentive that allows purchasers to add value to this activity. Marketers can add to this.
6. Make all these mugs as easy to wash and as durable as possible. Non-toxic, non-breakable, easy to wash. No problem.
7. People love to drink coffee/tea in their cars. There's an another possible angle to create a cross-incentive
Well there's a few things I thought about.
http://www.keepcup.com.au/
Best alternative is my coffee cup that I have black coffee (no milk or sugar) and I refill but never wash. Gradually the layer of coffee tar on the inside exchanges with the fresh coffee.
It's also pretty hygienic, nobody else ever borrows my mug, and nothing can live on the layer of caffeine sludge.
Could some unfortunate soul who had the misfortune of reading this entire article please summarize it in 3, possibly 4 sentences for us of a weaker constitution?