Environmentalists are slamming Starbucks for falsely claiming its plastic cups are “widely recyclable,” after an investigation could not confirm a single one being recycled.
Vermont-based Beyond Plastics said Monday that most of the single-use, plastic cold beverage cups placed in recycling bins at Starbucks stores it recently tracked ended up in landfills or incinerators.
The nonprofit advocacy group placed 69 Bluetooth-enabled trackers inside Starbucks’ in-store recycling bins. Of the 47 that provided data, 23 ended up in landfills and 11 wound up at incinerator facilities.
Ten more were last detected at waste transfer stations, a stop on the way to a landfill, and three made it to material recovery facilities, which sort plastics, possibly for recycling. But not a single cup was actually confirmed to be recycled, according to the group.
“It’s kind of stunning that they won’t tell the public where this plastic is going after people dutifully make sure it’s clean and put it in the special recycling bin,” Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and a former regional administrator for the US Environmental Protection Agency, told The Post.
A Starbucks spokesperson told The Post the company takes issue with the study’s methodology.
“Studies that place electronic trackers inside cups do not reflect how recycling systems operate in practice,” the spokesperson said.
“These materials, like Bluetooth-enabled trackers, are not accepted in recycling streams and can introduce contamination, which may change where cups are routed. Starbucks cups are designed to be recyclable, and have received a ‘widely accepted for recycling’ designation from How2Recycle.”
Outraged environmentalists are planning nine demonstrations across the state this week, including ones in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan, as they call on the java giant to stop spouting what the nonprofit called “rubbish claims.”
Protesters are also urging lawmakers to pass the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, which would force companies like Starbucks to reduce their use of plastic packaging and reimburse municipalities for waste management costs.
In 2020, Starbucks pledged to make 100% of its customer packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable by the end of the decade. It started allowing US customers to bring their own reusable cups for mobile and drive-through orders in 2024.
And in February, Starbucks published a joint press release with WM, the country’s largest waste hauler, formerly known as Waste Management, announcing that its cold beverage cups – which are made with polypropylene, or No. 5 plastic – are now “widely recyclable.”
“Recycling your Starbucks cold cups just got easier,” the company said in a statement, adding that more than 60% of US households could now recycle the cups in their curbside bins.
But one Starbucks cup included in the investigation last pinged at a waste facility in Peekskill, NY – the largest source of air pollution in Westchester County, according to Beyond Plastics.
“Starbucks made $1.8 billion in profit in North America last year,” said Courtney Williams, a cancer researcher who founded the Westchester Alliance for Sustainable Solutions, which will speak at a protest in Peekskill this Saturday. “How much of that was made from polluting our air, soil and waterways with single use plastic?”
Other cups that were recycled in New York City ended up in landfills as far away as Pennsylvania, Ohio and even Alabama. Waste exporting costs the city nearly half a billion dollars each year, according to the NYC Department of Sanitation.
Susan Keefe, the Southern California director for Beyond Plastics, estimated Starbucks goes through 8 million plastic cups each day, according to calculations based on the company’s annual public data.
She said the investigation focused on Starbucks because it’s a particularly flagrant offender, labeling trash bins in its stores with terms like “landfill,” “recycling” and “compost” – even though most of it ends up in the landfill at the end.
“They go above and beyond chains like Dunkin’, for example, [because] they actually customize the recycling bins, and this, I think, is deceptive and egregious,” Keefe told The Post. “I don’t know of any restaurant that actually goes to that extent to deceive their customers.”
Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol, who took the helm in September 2024, has been leading a turnaround plan focused on improving customer service and making stores more welcoming, hopeful that customers will be convinced to sit, relax and maybe order seconds.
The company has spent $1 billion to retrofit stores with comfy armchairs, plants and hardcover books. It also brought back Sharpies to stores so baristas can doodle on cups; condiment bars; and reusable ceramic mugs for in-store customers.
Keefe claimed across visits to roughly 50 stores, maybe “the occasional one person” was drinking from a reusable mug out of “dozens and dozens” of customers.
“It just kind of irritates me because they’re not even implementing and funding the policy that they announced a year and a half ago in their existing stores,” Keefe said. When she asked customers whether they would consider drinking out of the mugs, many replied that they thought the mugs were for sale, she added.
Beyond Plastics is urging Starbucks to “stop lying” about its recycling policies, take down the recycling visuals in stores, switch from polypropylene cups to fiber-based cups and enforce their ceramic mug policy.
In a page on Starbucks’s website about its recycling and waste reduction policies, the company acknowledged that recycling can be “extremely challenging,” noting that one wrong item in a recycling bin can render the entire can’s contents unrecyclable.
It also noted that different commercial recyclers accept different materials, so the company can’t implement a universal program across its footprint, and that for stores located in shopping malls, it’s often the landlord who oversees waste collection.
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