Amid public pressure to curb trash from disposable cups, Starbucks is rolling out a possible solution Thursday: a $1 reusable tumbler.
The Seattle-based coffee giant will start selling the plastic cups, bearing its logo and resembling the paper version, at all its company-owned stores in the USA and Canada in a bid to get customers to kick their throwaway habit.
“We see real excitement about these cups. People think they’re cool,” Starbucks’ Jim Hanna says, referring to recent test marketing in Pacific Northwest stores. He says 26 percent more cups were reused in those stores in November, compared with the same month a year earlier. The data are based on the dime discount Starbucks has been giving for each cup of coffee served in multiuse tumblers since 1985.
The new $1 cup comes as food and beverage retailers face pressure to reduce the amount of disposable cups and containers that ends up in landfills or litters streets and waterways. Thousands of people have signed petitions on Change.org, a website promoting social change, urging companies to promote reusable options and abandon polystyrene foam packaging, which is rarely recycled.
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