Got this comment in response to my complaints about Seattle's Best Coffee's reusable mug aversion and thought it deserved its own post:I work in Rockford, IL at Borders. I was originally a cashier, and about eight months ago I transferred to the cafe. We serve Seattle's Best Coffee and constantly promote the use of our ceramic mugs. Common regulars always use them, but it is difficult persuading new customers. I've noticed that when we remind them mugs keep the coffee much warmer people are more willing to use them. There's also a trend factor involved. If several people are using mugs, several more will inquire about them.
Our entire store (cafe AND bookstore) only recycles cardboard. It's really a sad, sad thing. We have bins for paper, and when I asked about the recycling I was told "we just don't do that." Keep in mind that this is not a matter of personal choice, I'm sure our employees would be willing to jump on the green bandwagon.
We do offer a whole ten cent discount if you bring a travel mug in, and never advertise it. I worked for several months before I even heard of the offer. I know the discount is better than nothing at all, yet cannot shake the fact that the sales tax on a cup of coffee is slightly double that! A ten cent discount is hardly effective and therefore motivates no one.
I can speak on behalf of the cafe and the eight baristas. We are attempting to become a green cafe and have taken matters into our own hands, mine particularly. No one knows how to organize a recycling program, and we're also clueless as to how we can make this an easy task.
As of right now, we've attempted to do this for one week and even the baristas who opposed it are caving in and helping. The downfall of all this is that I, alone, am trying to coordinate a way to transport all this material. I've spent the last three hours (which is how I came about this site) trying to find ONE drop-off recycling center that is open during the week. I've found two possible options, but still must contact them.
I've become more frustrated with each minute - not so much at the fact that a city of 150,000 won't mandate recycling - or that a simple option of printing a receipt on our registers would save the majority of our paper waste - or that the websites I've come across are vague.
I should have a defeated attitude, but I'm stubbornly motivated to succeed. I feel as though I have one option and that is to make a fuss over this. I think that's the only way anything is going to come about and hopefully I won't lose my job in the process.
It's hard being the first to do anything. Even The Green Miles has found something as simple as switching to reusables to be often demoralizing.But your reward is knowing that you've blazed a trail. In fact, a study just this week showed your role modeling of positive behavior can have a ripple effect through your social network and beyond.Keep fighting the good fight!
For the second time in two flights on AirTran from Sarasota, FL to National Airport, my trip took at least an hour longer than it was supposed to. With a longer-than-expected layover at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, I grabbed my reusable mug and set off in search of coffee.Even The Green Miles knows he’s not going to find organic or fair trade coffee in an airport, so I stopped at Seattle’s Best Coffee, a subsidiary of Starbucks. I held my mug out to the cashier and asked her to fill it with regular.“I can’t do that,” she said. “It’s store policy. I can only sell you coffee in one of our paper cups.”
Unfortunately, I’m no longer surprised by this answer. I’ve had trouble using my reusable mug at two different Dunkin Donuts locations. I checked with Starbucks, which owns Seattle's Best, and they said it's up to individual franchises to decide whether to accept reusable mugs or not.Every year, Americans drink more than 100 billion cups of coffee. Of those, 14.4 billion are served in disposable paper cups— enough to wrap the earth 55 times if placed end-to-end. Those paper cups contain a plastic lining made from a petrochemical that would produce enough energy to heat 8,300 homes. The plastic makes them impossible to recycle or compost.You’d think Starbucks would do better since they’re so often accused of greenwashing. While Starbucks coffee cups are made with 10% post-consumer recycled content, they all end up in the trash - 2.3 billion of them every year.The Starbucks website hosts an extensive corporate social responsibility policy, but it’s long on study and short on commitments. The chain is working with the US Green Building Council to establish LEED standards for the retail sector … but doesn’t say it’s actually committing to making any its stores meet those standards. While Starbucks purchases the equivalent of 20% of its in-store energy use in renewable power, it’s been incredibly slow to embrace fair trade, organic, or shade-grown coffee (respectively, 6%, 4% and 1% of its total coffee purchases).Even its recognition of global warming is wishy-washy. “Climate change is believed to be the greatest environmental threat of our generation.” (emphasis mine)The actual Starbucks chain gives a 10 cent discount for reusable coffee mugs. While that discount was given 17 million times in 2006, that’s less than one percent of the 2.3 billion paper cups Starbucks served that year. And reusable mug use actually dropped from 2005 levels. I’ve said before that a 10 cent discount won’t change people’s behavior, and Starbucks is unfortunately proving me right. That long corporate social responsibility policy says nothing about trying to reverse the trend in falling reusable usage.
