"sustainable coffee cup" news and stories

What's got Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks and Tim Hortons working together? No, there's no mass coffee merger in the works, but rather, a bipartisan acknowledgment that their daily coffee to-go routine is in need of a serious sustainability overhaul -- all that non-biodegradable Styrofoam is so pre-"green."

As The Boston Globe reports, the three coffee giants attended a "cup summit" at MIT this April (fittingly, on Earth Day), which was hosted by the Director of Environmental Impact at Starbucks, Jim Hanna. There, they met with cup manufacturers, municipal officials and waste transporters. As Hanna told the Globe, "sustainability is a problem we all have to share together."

The companies began sharing research on financial efficiency, consumer recycling habits, even prototype cups and plans for a "waste-free zone" pilot program. The perfect, sustainable coffee cup would need to be "recyclable or compostable, keep coffee hot, and not cost franchises too much," the Globe notes.