Cups tossed in recycling bins at Massachusetts Starbucks tracked to incinerators, Alabama landfill
BOSTON - For the last five weeks, WBZ has been searching for plastic. This is part of a national project from CBS, investigating the recycling habits of Starbucks and just how environmentally friendly they are.
Each day, Starbucks sells 6 million cold cups of coffee. Over the course of a year, that's 2.2 billion! That's a whole lot of plastic.
In April 2024, Starbucks announced their "more sustainable" cold cups could keep more than 13 million pounds of plastic from landfills each year. While these cups may be designed to be recycled, CBS News found only one facility in the United States recycles these types of cups into new plastic items.
Tracking Starbucks cups with AirTags
To find out how true these recycling claims are, WBZ glued Apple AirTags inside a number of Starbucks cups so we could track where they ended up.
A total of seven AirTagged cups were thrown in the recycling bin inside stores across the area - Boston, Marlboro, Franklin, Cohasset, Foxboro, Plainville and Acton.
Our goal was to see these cups being recycled. A quick trip to the dumpster revealed a different reality.
In every instance where WBZ could find a dumpster, the blue recycling bags from Starbucks ended up in the trash behind it.
Starbucks VP says it's "unacceptable"
Amelia Landers, Starbucks' Vice President of Product Innovation and Solutions, was displeased with CBS' findings.
"That is unacceptable. It's disappointing," Landers told CBS News. Landers points to the complexity of recycling as the primary issue. "Once it leaves our store, there are a number of elements that can come into play, that don't guarantee that it lands up in the right place," she said.
Plastics are quickly becoming one of the biggest environmental issues facing us today. Single-use plastics make up a huge percentage of all plastic - 40 to 50%.
Despite years and years of promises from the producers of these plastics, only about 10% of all plastic is recycled.
Where did WBZ's Starbucks coffee cups end up?
Of the seven cups WBZ put in the recycling, five went to incinerators: two cups to Saugus, two to West Wareham, and one to Preston, Connecticut.
One of the cups last pinged at a truck stop in Greencastle, Pennsylvania on its way to an unknown destination.
Landfill more than 1,000 miles away
Perhaps most surprisingly, the cup from the Plainville Starbucks ended up a landfill 1,100 miles away in Uniontown, Alabama.
CBS News spoke with Jan Dell, an anti-plastic activist who has worked with companies in 45 countries to develop climate resilient practices.
"Think of all the carbon emissions to like truck. This piece of waste, this little thing that that a consumer enjoys for maybe ten minutes all the way down to a different state and then dump it there to be there forever," Dell said.
She added, "the real problem that Starbucks has is the in-store bins telling every consumer who walks in these plastic cups are recyclable... put it in here and it'll get recycled."
When asked if Starbucks was being honest with its customers, Landers said, "I think we are doing everything we can to promote recycling in our stores and to guide customers on where to put that cup. And it's not guaranteed that the customer will put it in the right bin or that it won't get contaminated."
WBZ visited Casella Waste Systems' plant in Charlestown to talk to Jeff Ward, Casella's VP of Communications.
This facility in Charlestown is the fourth largest in the country with 250,000 tons of recycled material going through there each year.
Ward said he'd rather see some trash get mixed in with the recycling over entire bags of recycling end up in the landfill.
"We would never advise that. That's not what we would advise to take that approach to move a whole bag of recyclables to the trash," Ward told WBZ.
Massachusetts Attorney General statement
In a statement to WBZ, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Attorney General's office said, "As with other misrepresentations, false claims about recycling or recyclability may be subject to Massachusetts' strong consumer protection statue, which broadly prohibits the unfair or deceptive acts or practices in trade or commerce."
Back in Charlestown, Ward was quick to point out that recycling is not broken. "Recycling is in one of the best places we've seen in decades," Ward said. "There's always going to be the next opportunity to recycle more, recycle better. We can always improve."
Starbucks to make changes
In a conversation with a Starbucks spokesperson, they say through WBZ's reporting that some of the stores WBZ visited may be improperly disposing of recycled materials and that immediate steps are being taken to provide proper guidance.
