Starbucks is temporarily restricting the use of reusable, personal mugs in stores because of the coronavirus, the company announced last week. In an open letter posted on the company’s website, executive Vice President Rossann Williams wrote that the company has “taken a series of precautionary steps in response to this emerging public health impact.”
“Our focus remains on two key priorities: Caring for the health and well-being of our partners and customers and playing a constructive role in supporting local health officials and government leaders as they work to contain the virus,” Williams said in the company’s announcement. In her letter, Williams outlined five of the company’s steps, which include “increased cleaning and sanitizing for all company-operated stores to help prevent the spread of all germs” and restricting “all business-related air travel, domestic and international through March 31.”
The company also is “pausing the use of personal cups and ‘for here’ ware in our store,” Williams said, noting they will still honor “the 10-cent discount for anyone who brings in a personal cup or asks for ‘for here’ ware.”
As part of the steps, Starbucks converted its annual shareholders meeting in hometown Seattle to a virtual-only event due to concerns about the virus. The meeting will be March 18, as originally planned. The partylike event that attracted 4,000 shareholders last year was supposed to be held at a theater in downtown Seattle. A virus cluster has emerged in Washington state, however, with 10 reported deaths. “We will continue to stay close to our partners and local health officials, and we are optimistic this will be a temporary situation,” Williams said.
But even as Starbucks stops the use of personal, reusable cups, the company is pilot testing environmentally friendly cups that look and feel just like the company’s normal cups, but the plastic lining has been replaced with a compostable liner, making the cups recyclable and compostable, according to CNN. The coffee giant is introducing the cups in five major markets: New York, San Francisco, Seattle, London and Vancouver. The shift in lining means the cups can be thrown into an industrial composter, as CNN reported.
Finding its way to sustainability has been a rough road for Starbucks. The company found success in purchasing enough renewable energy to power stores in the U.S. and Canada. However, when it comes to improving its ubiquitous cups, the company has come up short. A goal to serve 25 percent of its drinks in reusable cups by 2015 was scaled back. By 2018, only 2 percent of the company’s drinks were in reusable cups, according to The Verge.
The new cups are part of the NextGen Cup Challenge – an open-sourced, global innovation challenge to redesign the fiber to-go cup and create a widely recyclable and/or compostable cup, according to Starbucks. The company considered 12 different prototypes before it chose to go with the BioPBS liner. The new liner is made from a renewable material, which is melted and spread on to the paperboard before it is used for the new cups, as The Verge reported.
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