"The new Starbucks coffee cup lid, which is being rolled out with great green fanfare in six cities this summer, was supposed be an environmental milestone. Starbucks promised that its latest design innovation, a “clear, recyclable” plastic drink cap that funnels liquid through a slightly raised area, would soon replace more than a billion plastic straws each year.
“By nature, the straw isn’t recyclable and the lid is, so we feel this decision is more sustainable and more socially responsible,” wrote Chris Milne, director of packaging, sourcing, and print production for Starbucks, in press materials. “Starbucks is finally drawing a line in the sand and creating a mold for other large brands to follow. We are raising the water line for what’s acceptable and inspiring our peers to follow suit.”
Starbucks did not respond to inquiries for this story.
But while the revamped plastic lid can theoretically be repurposed into new products, the reality is that it almost certainly will not be recycled. The lids are made from polypropylene, only 5.1 percent of which was recycled in the U.S. in 2015, according to the most recent data from the Environmental Protection Agency. (Just over 9 percent of all plastics were recycled.) And that was before China, which had been processing most U.S. plastic waste, including polypropylene, stopped accepting the vast majority of such waste in January 2018."
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