There are some brave souls here at Play that have stepped up to the challenge to reduce your plastic use this month. One of the questions I got today was.....
"what about the lid on my daily Starbuck's cup? They say their cups are made with 10% post-consumer recycled fiber...but nothing on the cap."
First, I love Starbucks. They are a frequent stop for me and I don't even want to know how much money my fiance and I spend each year. If I had to guess, I'd say probably close to $1500. Money savings aside, the plastic waste from the lids is SCARY! Recently posted by Dave Urban at GreenManBlog.com recently posted about this exact issue.
The estimated math on this is ridiculous. Dave reminds us that there are over 16,875 Starbucks' "around". I don't know where "around" is but lets assume it's just in the United States. They are open 14-16 hours a day and Dave is estimating they sell between 7 and 9 coffee's and hour. This of course, is a conservative number. Doing the math, that's somewhere between 98 and 144 plastic lids each day, each store. For the sake of easy math, Dave assumes 100 cups of coffee.....which is roughly 1,687,500 lids.
Yep it's a lot....oh but it gets better!
1000 of those lids weigh 10.45lbs. Multiply that times the number of lids from above and we have 17,634 POUNDS of unnecessary plastic lids everyday!! 9 TONS!
In a year, that number grows to 3,240 TONS A YEAR. This is a horrifying statistic. And it's just a guess!
As employees of PlayNetwork we love Starbucks! And as our luck would have it they are planning to increase their number of stores from 16,875 to over 40,000. Or so says Dave. The financial numbers for us for music increases and that is totally awesome. However, so does the number of pounds of lid waste.
So the short answer is....YES your Starbucks lid counts for the challenge.
I know it's a pain to take in your own mug. I don't do it hardly ever, mostly because I forget. But think about this way: When you take in your mug, aside from saving the paper cup and the plastic lid, I'm pretty sure it's a healthier option for you. The reason is because when you take in your mug, you hold the lid while they make the coffee. When they are done brewing some magic, they hand the mug back to you, and you put the lid on. When they put the lid on, the barista's bare hands press down on the lid all over where your mouth will be. Talk about YUCK!
If you reduce anything during this month of reduction, I challenge you to lose the lid and bring your own mug.
So the short answer is....YES your Starbucks lid counts for the challenge.
I know it's a pain to take in your own mug. I don't do it hardly ever, mostly because I forget. But think about this way: When you take in your mug, aside from saving the paper cup and the plastic lid, I'm pretty sure it's a healthier option for you. The reason is because when you take in your mug, you hold the lid while they make the coffee. When they are done brewing some magic, they hand the mug back to you, and you put the lid on. When they put the lid on, the barista's bare hands press down on the lid all over where your mouth will be. Talk about YUCK!
If you reduce anything during this month of reduction, I challenge you to lose the lid and bring your own mug.
Starbucks has a corporate policy to supply the lid. Why? Well because of a lawsuit about hot coffee and 1 person ruining it for the rest of us.
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