By 2025, a Starbucks visit would require you to bring your own personal cup to be refilled or use the coffeehouse’s “planet positive goal” for the future — a communal coffee cup.
Starbucks announced in a press release that they plan to get rid of single-use cups in favor of an all-reusable model by promoting personal cups to be refilled or offering communal cups that customers would be instructed to return upon their next visit. Those communal coffee cups would be cleaned at the store and provided to other guests, who would in turn repeat the process.
Several pilot programs in the U.S. and abroad were launched, to learn customer preferences. Some stores in Japan and London have already adopted the communal-cup model (a.k.a. “Borrow A Cup”), along with single-use cups. At the same time, sixteen shops in Korea now only offer reusable communal cups, personal cups, or “for-here” drinkware, just like in another “experiential” location in Shanghai.
The process in incentivizing customers who will adopt the communal-cup model or whether stores will be charging a deposit is still unclear. In some tests at U.S. locations, Starbucks charged an additional fee for customers who requested single-use cups (which is already a common practice in their branches in UK and Germany).
Starbucks gradually switched back to using reusable cups from being temporarily unable to allow customers to use their own cups between March 2020 and June 2021. The company adopted a new process where reusable cups were placed in ceramic mugs to ensure that a beverage is made contact-free from baristas.
“Innovation is how we will build our next chapter, advance our planet positive impact, and boldly reimagine our future together,” said Michael Kobori, the company’s chief sustainability officer.
Image credit: Starbucks Stories