Starbucks does its best to present the Starbucks store as a home away from home. And, by all means, this image is executed well in the presentation. The store is inviting, comfortable, and complimented by good music and a good atmosphere. This is all coupled with an asserted concern for the environment. To browse through the Starbucks Web pages, anyone can see Starbucks’ concern for recycling and reducing waste.
However, when was the last time you sat down for coffee at a friend’s house only to find the coffee served in a paper cup? Do you ever recall watching an episode of “Friends” and seeing all of the characters at their favorite coffee shop drinking their coffee from paper cups? Why does Starbucks think people associate having a cup of coffee at a coffeeshop with drinking it from a paper cup? Paper cups are to-go cups. If Starbucks is really a home away from home, why do they keep telling me to leave the entire time I’m there? And how many people with any real concern for the environment would just toss out 200 paper cups a day? And yet Starbucks does. How does this make sense? From the company’s website, there’s at least 13,000 Starbucks stores worldwide. To estimate an average Starbucks’ cup usage at 200 cups/day, that’s 2.6 million cups per day. In one year, that’s 949 million paper cups.
Why couldn’t Starbucks have reusable cups for in-house use like nearly every locally owned and run coffeeshop in town? I could have sworn that, in business, the point is to minimize expense and maximize profit. So how does Starbucks justify all of these disposable cups? Every disposable cup costs the business money; it costs next to nothing to wash a mug. It would be more cost effective for Starbucks to supply reusable in-house mugs and cups and discourage use of disposable ones. Starbucks could reduce waste product and company expense in two ways: 1) by having reusable in-house coffee cups and 2) by increasing emphasis on sales of reusable to-go mugs for repeat customers. Until they do this, how could I really buy into the Starbucks image of environmental concern? Obviously, it’s time for a change. I’d like to see a worldwide push to get Starbucks to change their policy, and all locally owned and run coffee shops to do the same.
Poetry & Essays 
