With Starbucks being the largest coffee chain in the world, there is definitely a need for eco-friendly cups. Starbucks just recently announced their major 10 million dollar commitment to redesign their paper coffee cups so that they can be easily recycled and composted on a larger, global scale.

“I think Starbucks doing this is a really good thing because they are helping the environment and reducing the amount of plastic being used” said senior Greta Geivett.

According to the Seattle times, “As environmental groups prepared to deliver petitions signed by hundreds of thousands of people pressuring the Seattle-based coffee giant on the issue, it announced a series of internal and external steps including $10 million for a three-year program to back entrepreneurs working on the problem”.

Starbucks is also in the process of reducing their use of plastic along with all of the other food-service businesses in Seattle because of a new city law that takes place July 1st.

Starbucks is collaborating with Closed Loop Partners to start the NextGen Cup Challenge, hoping to eventually make a fully recyclable and compostable cup. The company promised to share their solutions and they hope to inspire entrepreneurs and other players in the paper-cup industry to do the same.

Although it may seem simple to create a fully recyclable and compostable cup, it is much more complicated than it looks. There are many factors that go into the making of a cup like this, while it still needs to be able to keep drinks hot without using plastic.

Another issue is because Starbucks is such a huge company with so many locations all around the world, many different cities don’t have the kind of recycle companies like we do here in Seattle. We are fortunate enough to live in a city that is very cautious about being eco-friendly and eliminating harmful materials, but there are many cities all over the world that don’t have that.

“How we recycle in every city is determined by the recycle companies” said Starbucks corporate employee Carrie Boyle. “In Seattle, Starbucks cups can go in the recycle or compost because our city has the resources to do so”.

Even though it may be a long process to come up with a new design for a fully eco-friendly cup, it is a huge step in the right direction for Starbucks.