G-P to Recycle Starbucks Waste to Produce Napkins

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G-P Harmon, a recycling subsidiary of Georgia-Pacific, Atlanta, Ga., USA, and Starbucks stores in Chicago, Ill., will cooperate in a special pilot recycling project later this year. As detailed in a recent article in the Green Bay Press-Gazette, Green Bay, WI, select Starbucks stores in the Chicago area will provide cups, sleeves, corrugated containers, plastic lids, cups, and other material for recycling. GP Harmon will collect, sort, market, and sell the Starbucks materials.

The paper-based waste will come to G-P Harmon’s Broadway mill in Green Bay, where it will be combined with other recycled paper, including coated papers, paper with sticky surfaces, and paper previously used for food wrapping/packaging, to make napkins for Starbucks. G-P already is a napkin supplier to Seattle-based Starbucks. G-P Harmon will find other buyers for the plastic-based waste.

"It's going to be an interesting pilot program," Mary Jo Malach, spokeswoman for G-P in Green Bay, stated in the newspaper article. "What will be new about this project is it will be the first time we are doing a dedicated stream that will be turned into a specific product for a specific client." She noted that the length of the pilot project will be determined closer to its kickoff in the fall.

Starbucks is pursuing several initiatives to ensure that 100% of its cups are reusable or recyclable by 2015. Its goal is to serve 25% of its beverages in reusable cups and have front-of-store recycling in all company-owned stores by that deadline, according to the company's "2009 Global Responsibility Report."

Starbucks has some 16,000 retail locations worldwide. It estimates that the use of reusable cups in company-owned stores in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. diverted nearly 1.2 million lb of paper from landfills in 2009.