Starbucks Kicks Off Cup-Recycling Pilot Program in NYC
Posted on 15. Sep, 2009 by admin.
NEW YORK CITY, NY — Starbucks launched a pilot program in seven New York stores last week that could help the company move toward its goal of making all of its coffee cups recyclable by 2012.
Starbucks and Global Green USA’s Coalition for Resource Recovery will use the program to examine the collection and recycling of the coffee cups while in the same waste stream as old corrugated cardboard (OCC). Results will be announced in November.
“The lessons learned from the cup recycling pilot can be applied to the recycling of hamburger, pizza, and French fry containers, and all sorts of other paper food packaging,” Annie White, Coalition for Resource Recovery (CoRR) director, said in a statement. “If the initial pilot is successful, CoRR will expand the pilot to encompass more packaging types and restaurants, furthering our objective of generating business value and closing the loop on packaging.”
Three billion Starbucks coffee cups end up in landfills every year, in large part because they can’t be composted or recycled in most communities because of a thin polyethylene plastic coating that prevents liquid leakage.
Although they typically aren’t being processed to their highest value, Western Michigan University’s Coating and Recycling Pilot Plant certified the cups to be as recyclable and repulpable based on the Fibre Box Association’s Wax Alternative Protocol. They will be collected in special paper bin liners along with OCC and sent to Pratt Industries, where they will be compared to existing feedstock for recyclability and repulpability.
The company announced its 2012 goal in October 2009 before 10,000 baristas. The company first debuted a cup made with recycled content in 2004, a version with 10 percent recycled materials which took two years to develop and required approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. At the time the company said the new cups would reduce its dependence on tree fiber by more than five million pounds annually.
Images of Starbucks coffee cups CC licensed by Flickr user powerbooktrance
Source: GreenerDesign.com
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Paper Products that are Better, Cheaper and Greener
Posted on 08. Sep, 2009 by admin.
Marcal Small Steps paper towels are not only made entirely from recycled paper. They sell for less — in some instances quite a bit less — than paper towels made mostly from trees by the industry giants.
Here’s how the consumer’s choices look, measured from cheapest to most expensive, in terms of dollars per 100 paper towels:
• Marcal $1.64
• Bounty (Procter & Gamble) $1.79
• Giant (store brand) $1.85
• Brawny (Georgia-Pacific) 2.04, on sale
• Viva (Kimberly-Clark) $2.17
This is, of course, not the way things usually work. Solar power costs more than electricity made from coal. Organic food is pricier than conventional. You pay more for Starbucks’ coffee than you do for Dunkin’ Donuts. Partly that’s because the price consumers pay for conventional fare doesn’t reflect the full cost of the product. (See, for example, Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food, Bryan Walsh’s recent Time magazine cover story, about the hidden costs of industrial agriculture.)
marcal products
To say that I “discovered” Marcal isn’t precisely true. After I covered Greenpeace’s recent agreement with forest-products giants Kimberly-Clark, a PR woman asked me to look at the company. So I got on the phone with Tim Spring, Marcal’s CEO, who told me a little about Marcal and its history.
“This company was committed to saving trees for two decades before Greenpeace bought its first boat,” Spring said.
It turns out that Marcal, a 77-year-old maker of paper towels, napkins, toilet tissue and other consumer goods, has been using recycled stock since the 1950s. Based in suburban Elmwood Park, New Jersey, its paper-making factory employs about 900 people and draws much of its stock from those blue plastic recycling bins under office desks in Manhattan skyscrapers about 20 miles away.
Read entire article on GreenBiz.com
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18 Visions Design attends Ribbon Cutting
Posted on 26. Aug, 2009 by admin.
The monthly Green Drinks of Frederick was recently the launch site of www.choosegreenexpo.com. This exciting new website is a component of the Choose Green EXPO which will be held on October 17 & 18 at Frederick Community College. The website is a new venue available which will help people make informed choices that are environmentally responsible and promote a sustainable future. Produced by the Frederick County Builders Association the Choose Green EXPO will bring together local companies and organizations with a business principle that compliment the purpose of the sustainability movement. Citizens are encouraged to ‘bookmark’ the website for information on all things ‘green’ as vendors and speakers line up for the EXPO. For more information contact the FCBA at 301-663-3599.
Pictured in the ribbon cutting: (l-r) Toni Mullen – Monument Foam, Jason Feaga – 18 Visions Design, Tim Jones – Glory Energy Solutions, Denise Jacoby – Frederick Builders Association.
