Starbucks made a start! Everybody did it!

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With the continuous popularity of coffee, the continuous development of the takeout industry, and the continuous improvement of the scale of users in the industry, those take-away coffee cups that bring convenience to our life have also become another major source of pollution in the earth. The topic of environmental protection has been common in the coffee industry, such as the innovation of packaging, the reuse of coffee grounds, paper straws and so on. There are also many coffee shops that offer discounts on bringing their own cups, while others gradually introduce recycled cups in coffee shops.

Recently, the whole family convenience store, which has more than 15789 stores across the country, has announced that it will introduce recycling cups to 400 stores in Taiwan by the end of 2022, accounting for 10% of the total. As a result, the whole family will become the first chain convenience store chain in East Asia to introduce circular cups on a large scale, according to Greenpeace, an environmental group.

For consumers who do not bring their own cups and do not want to use disposable cups, they can rent reusable "recycling cups" in stores. It is understood that the number of disposable beverage cups used by the whole family in stores in Taiwan is about 118 million a year. If it is estimated that 1% of the stores in the whole family use recycled cups, 100000 disposable beverage cups can be saved in one year. If 10% of consumers use recycling cups, 1 million disposable beverage cups can be saved in a year, which is a considerable amount of waste reduction. Under the scale effect, if this project can be gradually popularized in all branches, it will certainly bring a very good plastic reduction effect.

Family convenience Store, a Japanese chain convenience store, was established in 1972. On August 18, 1988, the whole family convenience store began to enter Taiwan and was established in Zhongshan District, Taipei City, with a joint venture between FamilyMart of Japan and Hofeng Enterprise Group of Taiwan. At present, there are more than 4000 stores in Taiwan.

In recent years, in order to reduce the use of disposable cups, many catering and food companies have begun to launch cup rental services. In 2021, Starbucks also announced the launch of the "borrow Cup" campaign in its birthplace in Seattle, a two-month pilot program that will consider a global trial if it works well. It is understood that the activity is that if consumers take away Starbucks paper cups, they need to pay a deposit of $1 first, and finally the cups will be returned through the store kiosks or door-to-door pick-up service. After the paper cup is returned, the consumer can get back the $1 and get 10 Starbucks reward stars.

The recycled cups are cleaned and sterilized by a commercial dishwasher and sent back to the store for human use. Of course, it's fine if you don't want to return the cup, which is equivalent to buying the cup without a refund of the deposit.

In March, Starbucks said it would phase out disposable paper cups and plastic cups over the next three years and instead offer reusable cups to customers. The company is trying to meet its own waste reduction goals by 2030 and address customer concerns about sustainability.

In 2021, McDonald's also announced a partnership with recycled packaging service platform Loop to test launch reusable coffee cups in some restaurants in the UK. The program will begin in 2021, while McDonald's will continue to reduce the use of traditional disposable paper coffee cups.

Similar to Starbucks, customers need to pay a deposit and pay for a recyclable cup if they want to use the cup. After drinking the drink, the customer returns the cup and can refund the deposit. The return point can be in the store, or it can be returned directly to the recycling point prepared by Loop. Loop will clean and disinfect the cups and arrange for the next step to be put into use.

Since the cups used are still paper, and secondary use may involve health and hygiene problems, the acceptance in the market is not clear, but many people may still be psychologically unacceptable to "share a cup with strangers." However, under the premise of ensuring cleanliness and hygiene, this method does help to protect the environment.

Such a reduction plan has been rejected all the time, but many people have not given up on environmental protection and have been insisting on it, although the global plastic pollution problem will not be completely solved. However, large enterprises take an influential step, which can definitely change the behavior of consumers and drive the thinking of the industry.

Starting from a circular cup, to develop consumer habits and concepts, the future can further require more enterprises to provide non-plastic choices, so as to speed up the realization of a plastic-free future.

Photo Source: Internet

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