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Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

beyondplastics.org

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Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#61

Post by legitster »

jstanley wrote: post #57
legitster wrote: post #49

There's a lot to unpack here. None of this is serious methodology. It's more of a PR statement. From their raw data, the 36 tests came from a much smaller handful of stores in urban locations - in reality it's a much smaller sample size. 8 alone came from urban New York. 6 came from a single Starbucks location in Olympia, WA. They jump to the conclusion that a transfer center means it's bound for landfill or incinera…

> not actually recycled but turned into fossil fuels or feedstocks This is such a great claim.

Turning plastics back into their feedstocks is literally the most straightforward form of recycling.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#62

Post by like_any_other »

School-Cotton wrote: post #5

Recycling is largely a scheme to make people feel better about themselves without actually meaningfully addressing their environmental impact. If you care about the environment, BY FAR the most important thing you can do is reducing your carbon footprint. Everything else is really a rounding error compared to that. But that requires a materially poorer existence: living in a smaller home, eating meat less frequently,…

> Recycling is largely a scheme to make people feel better about themselves

No, it's a scheme to stave off taxes on plastic packaging, or regulations to mandate glass. Which industry cares about how people feel about themselves, to fund and promote this scheme? On the other hand, it's very easy to point to the industry that benefits from continued use of plastic.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#63

Post by PlunderBunny »

bluGill wrote: post #38
1970-01-01 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to agree but you're basically right. If we switched everything disposable (glass, plastic, paper) into an aluminum version of itself, the world would be a much better place. Aluminum pizza boxes and Amazon shipments would be weird, and would probably need rounded corners (hello iPhone designers going into box design at retirement) but they would be 100.000% recyclable.

Would they? Aluminum needs a lot of energy to melt and then reform into something new. Since the alloy is not known they need to refine the different metals out just to ensure that they get the correct alloy for the user. Mining Al uses a lot more energy. That is I suspect the total damage from new plastic is less than recycled Al. Someone needs to find numbers to verify this of course.

I've wondered about this because I've heard the same thing from my partner - in Engineering school in Spain, she was told that waste aluminium as a building material should be avoided because it was so expensive to recycle. But we recycle aluminium here in New Zealand - perhaps it's something to do with being able to use green energy at night (New Zealand has abundant hydro power)?

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#64

Post by Teever »

wffurr wrote: post #28
throwaway27448 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unwanted elements include any kind of glass or glass bottle ?? Isn't this one of the most recyclable materials there is? Even aluminum cans come with contaminants that can't be removed by the consumer. Regardless, at least you can easily reuse glass jars for home use. I find they make excellent drinking glasses and the reusable lid is a nice perk.

It takes more energy and work to reuse glass than to just make new glass. Sand is abundant. Recycled aluminum is much less energy intensive than new aluminum even with contaminants.

Is that true if the bottle is reused several times?

I know that in some places they standardize the glass beer bottles to one or two types and strongly encourage people to bring the bottles back to the same location that they get beer from.

This results in a circular supply chain that sees bottles sterilized and reused many times. The number I heard was an average of 8 uses on average before a bottle gets a chip in it that renders it unsuitable for reuse, and then it is recycled.

It seems to me that this tight distribution loop is a key part of successful reuse and recycling endeavours.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#65

Post by legitster »

synack wrote: post #35
dzink wrote: post #14

Visited a recycling facility recently. It’s a private company that covers an entire county in California. They filter the garbage wit people and a big machine and seem to get paid by companies abroad to ship them all recyclable materials - plastics, cardboard, metals, glass. That pays enough to keep them in business for decades. Someone really needs to look at where the materials from our garbage go.

I toured a sorting facility in Seattle recently. They said the only really profitable output is aluminum, everything else costs more than virgin material.

My understanding is that glass gets downcycled into a lot of products like concrete or asphalt or aggregates. It's not profitable, but it's really easy to provide at a low loss.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#66

Post by hypeatei »

mulmen wrote: post #45
hypeatei wrote: post #8

> It's time for Starbucks to stop making misleading recycling claims and start prioritizing plastic-free, preferably reusable, alternatives for its customers. I agree on the misleading claims part, but they do allow you to bring in your own personal cup already as long as it's clean. I don't see how that's not an alternative.

If I am being extremely generous I think the key word there is prioritizing . It's a moving goalpost. Could mean "allow you to bring your own cup" or "advertise you can bring your own cup" or "offer a discount for bringing your own cup".

Fair. It's definitely too broad of a statement and I feel like calling out the reusable cup policy that Starbucks already has would be more helpful. The current statement reads like there is no alternative whatsoever and you're forced to dump plastic into the ocean if you get a drink from there.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#67

Post by [deleted] »

tmnvix wrote: post #41
throwaway27448 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely there's no point in reducing your personal carbon footprint without holding capital accountable at the state level.

If I remember correctly, US per capita CO2 footprint is around 14 tonnes (this includes industrial activity). Average US driver of an ICE vehicle produces around 4 tonnes of CO2 per year. Personal choices matter.

[deleted]

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#68

Post by throwaway27448 »

bluGill wrote: post #39
throwaway27448 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely there's no point in reducing your personal carbon footprint without holding capital accountable at the state level.

Your efforts cascade. You alone mean nothing, but states and companies are just reacting to the collective wants, so if everyone waits for everyone else first nothing will happen.

> states and companies are just reacting to the collective wants

Insanely naive take. They react to capital.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#69

Post by legitster »

themafia wrote: post #50
rileymat2 wrote: post #44

My local Starbucks has 2 bins for recyclables and trash with little images about what to put in each bin. Many customers look at them, think, and put them in the right bin. Most just throw them in the middle trash bin. At the end of the night, all three bins go into the same dumpster, they recycle nothing there.

My gut feeling is this should be illegal. It's something like false advertising.

It should also be illegal when municipalities do it.

Just because the city offers a recycling pickup, doesn't mean most of it actually gets recycled.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#70

Post by InsideOutSanta »

legitster wrote: post #49

There's a lot to unpack here. None of this is serious methodology. It's more of a PR statement. From their raw data, the 36 tests came from a much smaller handful of stores in urban locations - in reality it's a much smaller sample size. 8 alone came from urban New York. 6 came from a single Starbucks location in Olympia, WA. They jump to the conclusion that a transfer center means it's bound for landfill or incinera…

Burning paper is not the same as burning plastic.
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