Thereโs a protest going on right now at Starbucks Headquarters. No, itโs not because someone took exception to them wanting to use their international platform to hire refugees or because their holiday cups arenโt Christmas-y enough. This protest is in response to Starbucksโ unrecyclable cups.
Started on Monday, #BetterCup is a five day protest being staged by Stand.earth, a Bellingham, Washington-based environmental group that is โcalling on Starbucks to live up to its 2008 promise to make a 100% recyclable paper cup.โ From Stand.earthโs press release:
The protest will include handing out free Starbucks coffee in prototype recyclable cups to all Headquarters employees, multiple appearances of a 12+ foot tall โmonsterโ made of more than 1,000 used Starbucks cups, and erecting a wall of 8,000 used cups, representing the number of the companyโs to-go cups that get discarded every minute.
The efforts of Stand.earth are laudable, and to be quite honest, if thereโs an American coffee mega-chain that would make this sort of environmentally friendly change it is Starbucks. The company is no stranger to taking on causes; it certainly would not be shocked to find out theyโve already invested a lot of time and money into developing a recyclable cup that can be made on the scale needed for such a large company. Only time will tell.
For more information on Stand.earth or the protest, visit their official website.
UPDATE: Starbucks has sent the following in response to the Stand.earth protest:
A full statement can be found here.
Zac Cadwaladerย is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas.ย Read more Zac Cadwaladerย on Sprudge.
*top image via Earth911