As You Sow - Beverage Container Recycling

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As You Sow's shareholder resolution requested the company to develop a more comprehensive beverage container recycling policy.

Senior Program Director Conrad MacKerron presented the proposal at the meeting on March 23rd and garnered 8.1% of shareholders' support. His blog post leading up to the vote was published on Triple Pundit. Read the Seattle Times article about the shareholder meeting here or the investor fact sheet As You Sow distributed here.

Though we are in dialogue with the company, we re-filed our resolution due to concerns about their current recycling policies:

Starbucks' Policies Are Far From Comprehensive: It has not set recycled content goals for glass (Frappucino), plastic (Ethos water) or metal (Doubleshot) beverage containers. It has not set recovery goals for glass, plastic or metal beverage containers.
Existing Commitment Covers Just 18% of Stores Serving Starbucks Coffee: The commitment to offer paper and plastic cup recycling owned and operated locations is welcome and significant but covers only a small fraction of total company operations.
Company Not Counting How Many Customers Use Reusable Tumblers and Mugs On-Site: Starbucks says it encourages customers to choose reusable beverage containers as a way to reduce paper cup usage. However, the company is not counting how many customers actually choose to drink beverages from glasses and mugs consumed in its stores. If basic metrics are not being gathered, this raises questions about the effectiveness of its approach.
Impact of Ready-to-Drink Beverages Minimized: The company says ready-to-drink beverages where we seek recovery goals comprise only 4% of sales. Yet Starbucks' CEO recently announced that selling ready-to-drink beverages in grocery stores is a key part of the company's future growth strategy meaning sales could increase dramatically.

The company has made an impressive commitment to recycle all post-consumer paper (hot) and plastic (cold) beverage cups left in its stores by 2015, including finding markets where these materials will be recycled. It's also encouraging that the 3 billion paper coffee cups it sells in the U.S. market annually contain 10% recycled fiber content.

However, we have filed a shareholder proposal for 2011 asking the company to broaden its recycling commitment because it still lags beverage industry peers on a recycling strategy for beverages sold in glass bottles and metal cans, and for water sold in plastic bottles. The company has made no commitment to use recycled content in its Ethos brand water bottles or to take specific measures designed to increase rates of bottle recovery. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo both use a significant percentage of PET resin in plastic bottles sold in the U.S. Nestle Waters NA has introduced re-source, a brand of bottled water with 50% recycled PET content. Pepsi's Naked Juice brand uses 100% recycled PET plastic in its bottles.

Starbucks' Frappucino bottles and Doubleshot cans are widely sold in grocery and convenience stores nationwide. They are a significant part of the value, visibility and future growth of the brand. The company needs to develop recycled content goals, especially for plastic, and container recovery goals as Coca Cola, Pepsi and Nestle Waters have done.

Read the text of our proposal here.

Read the fact sheet for investors here.