Environmentally conscious consumers might already plan to use reusable mugs every time they visit their local Starbucks for a brew. But all humans are fallible, so sometimes they forget the cup in their drying rack at home. And for consumers who love the efficiency and convenience of a drive-thru, handing over their reusable mug at the window is contradictory, because it extends the time needed to complete the transaction. In this sense, there’s no great option for avoiding the waste associated with the approximately 6 billion disposable Starbucks cups that get thrown away each year.

Starbucks is determined not to allow such hassles stand in the way of its environmental commitments. In a pilot test, being run in a dozen California locations, it offers polypropylene cups that consumers can borrow and return on their next visit, tossing them into a bin maintained by a renewable services provider called Turn Services. These reusable vessels get washed and sterilized; they can survive about 120 uses. In addition, the sterilization process can take place in Turn’s mobile vans, which means that the inventory of cups can shift locations easily and as needed. Another option, tested in one store, puts the sterilizing machines right at the counter, so the cleaning process is available on demand.

The QR codes on each Turn cup enable the partners to track the pathway that the cups take before being returned. For example, they can determine if hot or cold beverage drinkers return more cups, whether people return them to the same or different store locations, how long they hold on to the cups before returning them, and how many uses each cup has undergone. These data are invaluable for the sustainability initiative but also can inform Starbucks about other consumer behaviors that were difficult to track previously.

While experimenting with “Borrow a Cup” as a novel method for delivering drinks, Starbucks also is seeking ways to make it easier and more appealing for consumers to reuse their own cups, nearly infinitely, by creating routes to hand over and receive those cups back, even if people order through the mobile app or in the drive-thru lane. Such choices would be optimal from an environmental standpoint, but as noted, it would be well-nigh impossible to ensure that every customer, every day, remembers and is willing to tote around their own cups.

To incentivize consumers to switch to reusable rather than convenient, disposable options, Starbucks and Turn Services also have devised unique tactics. For the Borrow a Cup program for example, they might charge a fee for any cup that was not returned. But according to Turn Services, in its past experience, including introductions of the bins at Live Nation concerns, consumers reacted negatively to such a punitive approach. Instead, by leveraging Starbucks’ existing, popular customer loyalty program, coffee drinkers earn an extra entry into a raffle to win a gift card with each cup they return.

The benefits offered to consumers for using their cups brought from home are more straightforward, namely, a 10 cent discount per cup, as well as 25 bonus points for members who collect the points as part of the loyalty program. According to the director of its global reusables strategy, Starbucks has learned “from our behavioral science-based approach and our global test learnings that a simple discount, no matter how generous, will not engage all customers. To achieve long-term behavior change, there must be multiple motivators, functional and emotional, consistently to drive routine adoption.”

In recognition of the effectiveness of different drivers, Starbucks thus makes the reward into something like a game: If consumers return their Borrow a Cup vessels, they get entered into a sweepstakes. If they use their own cup, they can earn more points, which they can apply to games within the loyalty member app.

Such efforts are critical for Starbucks, which has had to acknowledge that it would not be able to meet some of its ambitious environmental goals, such as offering completely compostable hot beverage cups and doubling choices of reusable cups by 2022.

Discussion Questions

1. Do you use your own cup when you visit Starbucks? Would you be more likely to Borrow a Cup and reuse it?
2. How can Starbucks (and Turn) use information about each cup to devise additional sustainability strategies?

Sources: Adele Peters, “At These Starbucks Stores, Every Cup Is Now Reusable,” Fast Company, August 14, 2023; Katie Pyzyk, “Starbucks’ and Turn Systems’ Reusable Cup Program Aims for Waste Reduction,” Waste Dive, August 23, 2023; Starbucks, “Starbucks’ Latest California Borrow a Cup Test Furthers Company’s Shift Toward Reusables,” August 14, 2023, https://stories.starbucks.com/press/2023/starbucks-latest-california-borrow-a-cup-test-furthers-companys-shift-toward-reusables/