None of Starbucks' 'Widely Recyclable' Cups Ended Up at a Recycling Facility

Electronic Bluetooth Trackers Placed in Starbucks’ In-Store Recycling Bins Followed the Polypropylene Cups to Landfills and Incinerators

For Immediate Release: May 20, 2026

Contacts:

Melissa Valliant, Beyond Plastics — [email protected] , (410) 829-0726

Judith Enck, Beyond Plastics — [email protected], (518) 605-1770

A three-month national investigation by Beyond Plastics found that not a single tracked Starbucks cold-beverage cup ended up at a recycling facility — even when the cups were placed in clearly marked recycling bins inside Starbucks stores. As detailed in the new report , titled “Tracking Starbucks’ Deceptive Recyclability Claims,” the findings directly contradict Starbucks’ recent public claims that its single-use polypropylene (No. 5 plastic) cold cups are “widely recyclable.”

"Starbucks is telling its customers that these plastic cups get recycled, but our trackers tell a different story — they're ending up in landfills and incinerators and not being recycled," said Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and a former EPA regional administrator. "Accepting a plastic item for recycling is not the same as actually recycling it, and the company knows the difference. It's time for Starbucks to stop making misleading recycling claims and start prioritizing plastic-free, preferably reusable, alternatives for its customers."

Between January and March 2026, Beyond Plastics placed 53 Bluetooth-enabled trackers inside single-use polypropylene cold cups and dropped them into in-store recycling bins at 35 Starbucks locations across nine states and Washington, D.C. Of the 36 trackers that returned usable data, none pinged from a recycling facility. Instead, the cups traveled to landfills, incinerators, waste-transfer stations, and material recovery facilities.

“We tracked Starbucks’ plastic cups using Starbucks’ own in-store recycling bins, and not a single one ended up at a recycling facility," said Susan Keefe, Beyond Plastics' Southern California director. "This is the world's largest coffee chain, and about 75% of its U.S. beverage sales are cold drinks, mostly served in plastic cups. That's a massive amount of plastic waste. Contrary to what it touts, Starbucks is not “giving cups a second life ” and can't recycle its way out of its plastic problem. It needs to stop deceiving its customers into thinking it can."

Key Findings:

... continue reading