Everything but the Coffee (29 page)

During the 2006–2007 holiday season, I conducted my own Starbucks’ environmental impact study to learn about the company’s efforts to save the planet. For a month beginning in early December, I went to twenty-seven Starbucks stores in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. (My wife, Ann Marie, and our favorite person, Libby McRae, helped out with
the research.) Not once in forty-three Starbucks visits did a barista ask us if we wanted our coffee for here or to go. Not once did someone offer us a ceramic cup. Instead, they automatically put our drinks into brand-new, 90 percent virgin white paper cups. When we asked if they had ceramic cups, they often looked surprised and said haltingly yes—except at one store where an employee said he didn’t have anything other than paper. (That response was against company policy.) But no store showed off the in-store option—and Starbucks does indeed have nice, hefty ceramic cups. As an added bonus, coffee aficionados maintain that coffee tastes better in reusable mugs. But typically I couldn’t even
see
these cups at Starbucks. If I hadn’t poked around the company’s Web site or read a few reports, I would never have known that it offered the reusable option. Usually I had to get on my toes and peer over the glass covering the espresso machine to see the ceramic mugs.

At a downtown Philadelphia outlet, a barista gave me a funny look when I asked him for my tall coffee in a “for here” cup.

“Do you have ceramic cups?”

“Huh? I don’t know,” he answered. “Let me ask.”

Then he wandered off and whispered to his coworkers. They looked back at me. After he spoke to a couple more people in green aprons, he went into the back of the store and came out carrying a ceramic espresso cup.

“Will this work?” he asked, holding up the tiny mug.

Before I could answer, one of his coworkers shouted, “I found it!” and came running out with a full-sized reusable cup.

Over the course of my December experiment, I counted about 520 people sitting in the Starbucks stores I visited. Only three drank their coffee out of an EPA-and coffee-connoisseur-recommended reusable cup—a sensible and certain way for consumers to show their everyday commitment to help save the planet.

Just to make sure that it wasn’t just people from Philly or New York or Jersey who liked paper cups, I conducted abbreviated versions of my experiment after the holidays in Atlanta and Seattle. At a jampacked
downtown Atlanta store, I sat for an hour as a stream of customers came and went. Most got their coffee to go, all in paper cups. Some sat down to eat a muffin or scan spreadsheets on their computers. A few held meetings. Several read the paper, and a few more talked on their cell phones. (Not much third place action going on here.) Not one patron drank a Starbucks beverage out of a reusable cup. A few weeks later on a bright, crisp Tuesday morning in Seattle, I watched as a ceaseless flow of customers passed through a Starbucks located on the bottom floor of a glass office building across the street from the federal courthouse. In one hectic early-morning hour, the baristas there served 224 customers. None of them—not one—used a reusable cup. One woman even carried a mug with her into the store and then set it down on a table and got her latte in a paper cup. Most of these customers could easily have used the more eco-friendly option. Despite the cold bite in the air, at least half of the people in line weren’t wearing coats, so they probably worked on one of the many floors above the store. How hard would it have been for them to bring a mug down from their cubicle? If only two customers that hour and every other hour during the day had used their own cups, this Starbucks could have saved over the course of a single year 1,631 gallons of water and reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 226 pounds and its solid waste output by 252 pounds.
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I got these numbers from Starbucks. But this information about the positive environmental impact of reusable cups wasn’t available in the stores. Instead, it is buried on the company’s Web page. That’s not because Starbucks has suddenly become a shy and demure company, reluctant to talk about its efforts to save the planet. A couple of times a year, it takes out full-page advertisements in the front section of the
New York Times
to celebrate Earth Day and explain its other green initiatives.
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Company representatives tell reporters about the firm’s use of clean energy and boast about its to-go cups made with recycled material—things that Starbucks did and developed on its own. Sometimes, it seems like the company only wants to discuss the things that it can claim credit for. Starbucks doesn’t have all that much to say about what consumers themselves can do for the
planet—except through buying a cup of coffee from Starbucks, an environmentally conscious company. What’s more, Starbucks doesn’t put out any obvious or even subliminal messages or even talk to reporters about the ceramic cups or takeaway options, again the surest ways of getting their customers involved in saving the planet and dealing with the daily problems and politics of waste. Judging from the responses I got when I asked for an in-store cup, it didn’t even seem like it let its workers in on the program. Several employees I talked with told me that this was never part of their training. One former employee, in fact, said that when he worked for the company, “we were expressly told by our SM [store manager] . . . to not encourage the use of cups, and to keep them out of the visual line of sight for the customers coming in to order.”
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Maybe Starbucks didn’t want to get rid of the paper cups after all. Perhaps it didn’t want to pay dishwashers or give up store space for machines and sinks, although it is hard to imagine that a few broken cups or water for cleaning could cost more than the actual paper cups them-selves, which again cost anywhere from twelve to twenty-two cents apiece. Or maybe Starbucks didn’t want to give up the paper cups because they are, in the end, a major source of advertising. All those businesspeople in suits, Hollywood starlets, and college students carrying the cups in their hands broadcast the brand’s value better than any television spot could do. The same could be said about the packaging for the pounds of coffee for sale at Starbucks. These, too, are a key form of in-store and at-home advertising, and the sacks are not recyclable like the ones available at a number of smaller, greener roasters. Just like with the cups, maybe Starbucks didn’t want to give up the discovery-themed graphics on the pounds of coffee in favor of helping the planet.

A HALF-EMPTY CUP

Before I started thinking about trash and coffee consumption, I always got my coffee in a to-go cup. When friends would ask me why, I would say I liked the taste better. Even when I had my laptop and planned to
stay in a coffee shop for hours working on an article or grading papers, I took the paper route. Despite what I said, this choice didn’t have much to do with taste. I liked the flexibility. What if I had to rush out? I would still have my coffee. Like a lot of people, I didn’t want to limit my options. Isn’t that what the world of endless consumption teaches us?
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After reading Elizabeth Royte’s book on trash and the EPA reports, I decided to lessen my own environmental impact.
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I started to recycle more, buy fewer single-serving items like the individual containers of applesauce I got for my kids’ lunches, and bring my own bags to the grocery store. But probably the most important step I took was to start drinking my coffee out of reusable cups. So did my wife. Together, we probably buy four cups of coffee a day, which translates—again according to Starbucks’ numbers—into about 250 pounds of solid waste that we generated each year through our to-go coffee purchases. By using in-store and out-of-store reusable cups, we are keeping trash out of the landfill. We are also, in a very small way, stopping the cycle of waste and paper consumption—using paper and then getting rid of the paper— which requires energy at every stage. With each purchase, the process starts over: that is the cycle of waste.

After I changed how I bought my coffee, I must admit I felt kind of good about myself. I gained a satisfying sense of doing something unselfish for the environment. Walking down the street, I carried my reusable cup as a badge of honor. This easy sense of doing right did make me feel good and did, perhaps, get in the way of my engaging in a broader critique of consumption and the creation of waste. I didn’t take another step; for example, I didn’t start attending meetings of environmental action groups or writing op-ed pieces. I had done my part. That said, this wasn’t something I could easily have done at Starbucks.

In contrast, at the Other Greenline, an independent coffee shop near my house, the staff there makes my small eco-friendly gestures easy to accomplish. The reusable cups sit on a shelf right behind the cash register at eye level in clear view. At Joe Coffee Bar, a downtown Philadelphia coffeehouse featuring fair-trade blends and monthly meetings of gay
knitters, the staff there also makes things easy. The workers behind the counter always ask, “For here or to go?” If you say for here, you get your coffee in a ceramic cup.

Starting at midmorning on a Monday in December 2007, I spent three hours at Joe Coffee Bar. During this time, forty-seven people drank their coffee inside the store. Thirty-three of them either used a Joe mug or brought their own cup.

Just think how much more of the planet could be saved if Starbucks could be half as successful as Joe at getting customers to drink out of reusable cups. According to my rough sample, less than 1 percent of Starbucks customers in Philly, New Jersey, and New York used the stores’ ceramic mugs. If the company could get half of its in-store customers—as compared to the 75 percent at Joe—to take this option, it could save between 250 and 400 million cups per year. That adds up to a lot of trees and water and energy. Much, much more could be saved this way than from the company’s use of its heavily advertised cups made from 10 percent post–consumer use material. Eric Eisenbud, a chef from West Orange, New Jersey, told a reporter that he always gets his double latte with skim milk in a ceramic mug rather than a paper cup. “I want to save some trees,” he announced, and in this case, he really is doing a little something to that end.
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Starbucks could keep even more trash out of landfills by getting more of its to-go customers—the bulk of its trade—to bring their own cups. Back to the Joe example for a moment. Eight of the takeaway customers there—about a third of the total of the traffic—came in with their own tumblers. They got a twenty-five-cent discount on their coffee; the ones using Joe Coffee Bar’s very own travel cups got forty cents off. Starbucks has a similar but less generous policy. It charges customers ten cents less if they bring in their own to-go cups. This actually puts money in Starbucks’ coffers. Remember a cup with a lid and a sleeve costs some-where between twelve and twenty-two cents, so Starbucks makes an extra nickel or dime when someone brings his or her own container. Several times, moreover, when I have asked for coffee in my own tum
bler, the baristas will charge me for a venti minus ten cents, which actually costs more than my usual tall coffee in a to-go cup.

According to Starbucks’ social responsibility report, seventeen million customers used their own washable, reusable cups at the stores in 2006. As a result of these purchases, Starbucks announced that it kept 674,000 pounds of paper from going to the landfill.
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These are impressive numbers. But those seventeen million hits represent less than 1 percent of the company’s yearly customers and cup users.

Again, Starbucks doesn’t really advertise its policy on reusable cups. You can find information about the reduced charge for bringing your own cup—and how much landfill space has been saved—on the company’s Web site but not in the stores. During my December research swing, I went into the Starbucks at 11th and Chestnut streets in Philadelphia. Two shelves with three rows each stood a few feet from the door and formed a narrow corridor, funneling customers to the cash register. One side featured coffees from around the world. Signs and labels talked about—and sold—exotic blends from far-off places and how Starbucks helped improve farmers’ lives and the environment in Africa and Latin America. Stocking stuffers stood on the other side. Sleek, cool-looking logoed reusable travel mugs in an array of colors and sizes took up a whole shelf. But Starbucks—a company ever eager to deliver a message—didn’t say anything about its policy of offering discounts to to-go customers with their own cups. The manufacturer, moreover, placed a piece of paper inside the new reusable cups, which gave a detailed explanation of how to wash the cups but said nothing about how they could help save the planet. Imagine if it did. What if Starbucks “sold” its reusable cup program with the same aggressive and clever marketing that it used to sell seasonal lattes or Paul McCartney CDs? In 2008, Starbucks did put out an Earth Day poster urging customers to drink out of tumblers, but the signs went down before the end of spring. If the company made this a full-time promotion and got one out of every ten of its to-go customers to bring their own cups, it could keep millions of pounds of waste out of the nation’s landfills each year and slash the
amount of water, cardboard, and plastic it uses and greenhouse gases it emits. In other words, it could come closer to fulfilling its promise of helping save the planet.

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Not surprisingly, the EPA points to recycling as another sure-fire way to save landfill space. So does Starbucks. According to a brochure printed on 100 percent recycled paper underlining the “highlights” of Starbucks’ corporate social responsibility program, “seventy-seven percent of our U.S. and Canada company-operated stores where Starbucks controls waste and recycling had recycling programs in place.”
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Yet on my holiday investigation, I couldn’t see it on the front-end. I found only one Starbucks with recycling bins for newspapers or napkins or java jackets or plastic cups. Now, that doesn’t mean that Starbucks doesn’t recycle cardboard and other materials that go out the back door. Still, this surprised me, so I looked into the matter a little further. “Miss Barista” told the readers on starbucksgossip.com, “We go through about 50 gallons of milk a day and we do not recycle a single carton. We always have left-over NY Times and local papers we never recycle those either . . .. Lets
[sic]
be a little more ‘environmentally friendly’ starbucks.” Barista Carlyn Cummings had the same hope. At one point, she explained on star-bucksgossip.com, she tried to reduce her store’s environmental foot-print. “We didn’t get very far,” she told me when I tracked her down over e-mail, “because within our own store the new things we would create like recycling took more effort and wasn’t mandatory.”
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