Cups tossed in recycling bins at Massachusetts Starbucks tracked to incinerators, Alabama landfill

BOSTON - For the last five weeks, WBZ has been searching for plastic. This is part of a national project from CBS, investigating the recycling habits of Starbucks and just how environmentally friendly they are.

Each day, Starbucks sells 6 million cold cups of coffee. Over the course of a year, that's 2.2 billion! That's a whole lot of plastic.

In April 2024, Starbucks announced their "more sustainable" cold cups could keep more than 13 million pounds of plastic from landfills each year. While these cups may be designed to be recycled, CBS News found only one facility in the United States recycles these types of cups into new plastic items.

To find out how true these recycling claims are, WBZ glued Apple AirTags inside a number of Starbucks cups so we could track where they ended up.

A total of seven AirTagged cups were thrown in the recycling bin inside stores across the area - Boston, Marlboro, Franklin, Cohasset, Foxboro, Plainville and Acton.

"That is unacceptable. It's disappointing," Landers told CBS News. Landers points to the complexity of recycling as the primary issue. "Once it leaves our store, there are a number of elements that can come into play that don't guarantee that it lands up in the right place," she said.

Plastics are quickly becoming one of the biggest environmental issues facing us today. Single-use plastics make up a huge percentage of all plastic - 40 to 50%.

"Think of all the carbon emissions to like truck this piece of waste... all the way down to a different state and then dump it there to be there forever," Dell said.

"The real problem that Starbucks has is the in-store bins telling every consumer who walks in these plastic cups are recyclable... put it in here and it'll get recycled."

"I think we are doing everything we can to promote recycling in our stores and to guide customers on where to put that cup," Landers said. "And it's not guaranteed that the customer will put it in the right bin or that it won't get contaminated."

Recycling Challenges

WBZ visited Casella Waste Systems' plant in Charlestown to talk to Jeff Ward, Casella's VP of Communications.

"We would never advise that... move a whole bag of recyclables to trash," Ward told WBZ.

The Legal Perspective