Starting in 2020, Starbucks, a well-known American company that operates a chain of coffee shops, will say goodbye to straws .

It is Starbuck itself who gave the news, on the trend of a new eco-sustainable trend that has targeted the use of disposable plastic straws, often unjustified and avoidable, but above all capable of accumulating unimaginable quantities in a short time of plastic waste pouring into the seas and then depositing on the beaches, not only disfiguring the landscape but also compromising ecosystems and the well-being of the fauna in many cases.

The environmental policies of Starbucks

It must be said that Starbucks has always had an eye for all environmental issues, resulting in a rather virtuous company in this regard, sensitive to green and diligent campaigns in communicating the progress of their company when it comes to ecological awareness.

Already 15 years ago Starbucks began to reduce the size of handkerchiefs and paper packages to be able to resize the mass of waste generated daily.

Later his efforts focused on wasting water in his own cafeterias, and it all led to the use of taps that could avoid waste and the adoption of a very clear policy on the moderate use of water .

Starbucks also recycles most of its waste and many of its products are made up of up to 85% recycled materials. We also add the commitment to support coffee producers by buying the raw material at fair trade prices and, finally, the company policy of donating food not sold to charitable organizations .

What to replace straws with disposable straws?

But back to the straws. The global mobilization for the ban on straws has also touched the internal policies of the major companies, more sensitive or more careful, to ride the market trends.

Starbucks has turned out to be one of these and has seized the opportunity to announce the ban on straws in all its premises starting in 2020 . But what will be used instead of straws?

Here we touch on the controversial aspect of the question: Starbucks has presented an ergonomic lid with a spout that, as many environmentalists point out, is not only made of plastic, but even seems to employ a larger quantity than that used to produce a straw.

Not great progress, therefore, in the eyes of environmentalists. However, Starbucks reveals that according to the researches of the researchers to whom it relies, it is not only a question of plastic quantities but, more importantly, of quality.

These new ergonomic spouts are made up of the largest part of polypropylene (abbreviated in PP), an ideal polymer for food use, therefore hygienic, and easily recyclable from recycling plants, unlike the plastic of common cannecce, which unfortunately we see floating in the oceans or compromising the beauty of our coasts.

Not only, against what the appearances would tell us, the use of a spout larger than those of small straws, facilitates the work of recycling plants, which often use machines that are not yet able to capture plastic elements that are too small, too light or too thin.

According to the first tests it seems that 100% of the new plastic spouts are caught by the meshes of the recycling structures, something that happened with straws only in 8% of cases. Not only that, Starbucks has announced that it is working on an agreement with McDonald's to create a single shared recycling facility specialized in the processing of new ergonomic polypropylene nozzles.

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