Is Starbucks failing to keep its promise of recycling?

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX), the largest coffee chain in the world, may not have succeeded in keeping its promise to reduce the environmental impact of the 3 billion single use paper cups used to serve its beverages annually.

Starbucks subsidiary Seattle’s Best brand coffee is served at 30,000 restaurant locations, such as Subway and Burger King in the US and Canada. That’s three times the number of Starbucks stores, yet the company has made no commitment to recover any of its cups used at those locations.

The company earlier promised to offer in-store recycling of all post-consumer plastic and paper cups at 7,500 company-owned stores by 2015 and also committed to serve a quarter of its beverages in reusable cups by 2015 in an effort to reduce overall paper and plastic cup usage. But Starbucks has got no count on how many customers actually choose to drink beverages from reusable cups.

Starbucks says it encourages customers to choose reusable glass and ceramic tumbler ware when drinking beverages in its stores and they do keep track of customers who bring their own reusable mugs into stores and carry them out. But people have raised concerns that without counting how many customers choose to drink from reusable cups in their stores, how can Starbucks realistically meet its goals?

Starbucks’ commitment has notably expanded corporate responsibility for post-consumer recycling beyond glass, metal, and plastic bottles to paper and polypropylene beverage cups.

Product packaging represents nearly a third of the total U.S. municipal waste stream, triplepundit.com reported.