In many cases, the sorting, cleaning, and melting made recycling polypropylene more expensive than creating new polypropylene. recycling market to crater - many recyclers had considered the process of converting used polypropylene products into reusable plastic too costly to be profitable. Well before China banned imports on most plastic waste - and caused the U.S. Either way, the lid will last far longer than the buzz from your caramel cloud macchiato. The estimates of how long it takes for polypropylene to break down vary from decades to hundreds of years. Most will ultimately make their way to landfills. Others will be strewn about as litter on land or in waterways. Instead, some of the cups may be incinerated, an outcome that presents environmental and health threats. That means that the vast majority of these lids will not be repurposed - Starbucks operates in 75 countries but has cup recycling goals only for the U.S. Since then, polypropylene, which is categorized as “No. 5” by recyclers, has become even less likely to be recycled. plastic waste, including polypropylene, stopped accepting the vast majority of such waste in January 2018. (Just over 9 percent of all plastics were recycled.) And that was before China, which had been processing most U.S. in 2015, according to the most recent data from the Environmental Protection Agency. The lids are made from polypropylene, only 5.1 percent of which was recycled in the U.S. Starbucks did not respond to inquiries for this story.īut while the revamped plastic lid can theoretically be repurposed into new products, the reality is that it almost certainly will not be recycled. We are raising the water line for what’s acceptable and inspiring our peers to follow suit.” “Starbucks is finally drawing a line in the sand and creating a mold for other large brands to follow. “By nature, the straw isn’t recyclable and the lid is, so we feel this decision is more sustainable and more socially responsible,” wrote Chris Milne, director of packaging, sourcing, and print production for Starbucks, in press materials. Starbucks promised that its latest design innovation, a “clear, recyclable” plastic drink cap that funnels liquid through a slightly raised area, would soon replace more than a billion plastic straws each year. The new Starbucks coffee cup lid, which is being rolled out with great green fanfare in six cities this summer, was supposed be an environmental milestone.
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