Starbucks’ (SBUX.O), opens new tab plastic single-use cups it often serves in U.S. cafes are not as recyclable as the company claims, an environmental nonprofit group said on Wednesday.
Vermont-based Beyond Plastics attached location trackers to 36 single-use polypropylene cups earlier this year and placed them in recycling bins inside Starbucks’ cafes across the country. None of the cups were tracked to a recycling facility, the group said. Instead, 33 ended up in landfills, incinerators, or on their way to either. Three were last seen in sorting facilities.
The cups prominently feature a recycling icon and are depicted as recyclable on in-store recycling bins. Starbucks in February announced that its polypropylene cups were considered “widely recyclable” in the United States following a designation from a labeling group, How2Recycle.
A Starbucks spokesperson said on Wednesday that the company questioned the methodology of Beyond Plastics’ study, though she did not provide details.
Industry groups including the Association of Plastic Recyclers, which represents mechanical recyclers, say the tracking devices themselves may cause discarded items to be diverted from recycling streams. The Starbucks spokesperson said recycling depends on local infrastructure, which, she said, is “why we work closely with others, including the recycling companies, to help expand access and help improve the system.”
Starbucks in 2020 committed to making 100% of its customer packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable by the end of the decade. In 2024, Starbucks allowed U.S. customers to provide their own cup for mobile and drive-through orders. Under CEO Brian Niccol, the company’s policy is to serve in-store customers with reusable ceramic mugs, though Beyond Plastics said many in-store customers are still given plastic cups.
Judith Enck, Beyond Plastics’ president and a former Environmental Protection Agency official, said the group is urging Starbucks to stop calling its plastic cups recyclable, and also to completely switch to fiber-based cups, as the company has done in some markets. If such a switch were made, “it would be one of the most significant plastic-reduction corporate policies in the world,” she said.
The Iran war has driven up prices worldwide for plastics, which are made from oil or natural gas, Reuters reported in April.
Beyond Plastics said the U.S. recycling rate for plastics is under 6%, and most is not polypropylene plastic, which the group said has few processing facilities equipped to recycle it.
