Starbucks Closes The Loop and Recycles Their Cups in Partnership With Sustana

An estimated 600 billion paper and plastic cups are dispensed globally every year.

That’s your local coffee shop, McDonald’s, and basically anywhere in the world that sells you a hot or cold beverage. By their own admission, Starbucks makes up about 1% of that total, and while that feels like a relatively small amount, as soon as you start throwing around the word billion, shit gets really real pretty fast.

We’ve spilled an enormous amount of internet ink on our own pages about Starbucks’ failure to develop a fully recyclable or compostable cup. And we get it. There’s no easy solution, especially when you need the cup’s polyethylene liner to keep your hot beverage inside the actual cup and not in your lap.