Recyclable?

Starbucks sells on average 8.2 million paper cups of coffee a day, all of which can be recycled, but most still end up in landfills.

The world’s biggest coffee chain wants to change that by convincing everyone from recycling companies to paper mills that it’s worth the effort to recycle paper cups. But the strategy has proved a hard sell, calling attention to a widespread problem in the recycling movement: Just because something is recyclable doesn’t mean it gets recycled.

About 25 percent of items thrown into home recycling bins are never recycled, said Susan Collins, executive director of the nonprofit group Container Recycling Institute. Oftentimes items are deemed unusable by the time they reach recycling centers because they are contaminated with food or laced with broken glass from containers that shattered in the same bin.

Currently, recycling companies want to focus on other materials, like cardboard and aluminum, for which there is an attractive resale market. That’s not the case with paper cups, forcing Starbucks to try to collect as many of its own cups as it can, strike deals with companies to recycle them, and then agree in some cases to buy back the material.

“You can collect all of this stuff,’’ said Christine Beling of the Environmental Protection Agency, who agrees with Starbucks’ approach. “But unless you have someone to buy it from you, who cares?’’

With paper cups for coffee, there is another major issue: Many recycling companies don’t have the equipment to separate the cup’s paper from its inner lining which prevents hot liquids from leaking.

To improve collections, Starbucks has been installing special bins designed to segregate coffee cups from other waste; the chain recently introduced them in all 30 of the company’s stores in the Boston area. The chain is then lining up companies that have agreed to recycle its cups, which have been made of 10 percent post-consumer recycled fiber since 2006. In Massachusetts, Starbucks is working with RockTenn, with plants scattered across the United States, to collect the cups, recycle them, and sell the material to paper mills.

In some markets, such as New York and Chicago, the company is working with paper mills and recycling centers to turn some of the recycled paper cups into napkins used by Starbucks.

“The focus is often, ‘What can I do to the cup to make it more recyclable?’ ’’ said Jim Hanna, Starbucks’ director of environmental impact. “What’s more important is, ‘What can I do to the infrastructure to make these cups more recyclable?’ ’’

Link 1 and Link 2

Science Scene - Starbucks going LED

On a light-by-light basis, changing from incandescent to LED only makes a tiny difference in energy consumption and cost, but when you're talking about retrofitting a thousands of Starbucks stores, the energy savings can be huge.

That's just what Starbucks has found now that the replacing of incandescent and halogen lights in 7,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada has been completed.  The company's Director of Environmental Impact said that the program is on target to cut lighting energy consumption by 80 percent.

The good folks at Greenbiz did the math and figured that each 1,000 square foot store was saving $600 a year and reducing CO2 emissions equivalent to 10 barrels of oil.  The lights also cut total store energy consumption by 7 percent.



Source

Wine and Coffee Theatre

Starbucks (SBUX), whose massive growth and expansion has halted in recent years, has started experimenting with ways to bring coffee lovers back. It's been trying to attract customers by selling everything from CDs to breakfast sandwiches, and will soon offer free Wi-Fi. And now, in what may be its most daring attempt yet , it's getting into wine and coffee theater.


Starbucks will reopen a testing ground store dubbed "Olive Way" in Seattle's trendy Capital Hill neighborhood, with a menu that offers wine from the Pacific Northwest's vineyards and beer from local craft brewers. In addition, this 2,500-square-foot shop which reopen in the fall, will have espresso machines in the middle and a different decor.

The coffee theater's counters will be narrower to bring customers closer to baristas; the machines will brew one cup at a time to extract deeper flavor from beans; and the menu will be bigger, full of savory foods that pair with coffee, wine and beer, the Associated Press reports.

Many critics complain that Starbucks has lost its unique environment and image and should go back to its roots. This new attempt may help with ambiance, as it offers a warmer environment where customers feel comfortable staying for hours -- as they once did. And it would definitely differentiate Starbucks from other chains. Whether it will jump-start growth is a different matter.

See full article from DailyFinance:

For more on Olive Way, click here

My three favorites, Wine/Beer/Coffee, all in one place - Seattle, here I come :o)