ALBANY, N.Y. — From Buffalo to Manhattan, demonstrators gathered at nine different New York coffeehouses on Sunday as part of a national week of action targeting Starbucks over its environmental impact. Protesters are raising concerns about the coffee giant’s single-use polypropylene plastic cups, which are labeled as recyclable but are reporting these products frequently end up in waste streams.
“We see corporations like Starbucks that are using recycling, claiming that recycling boosts their image, when in reality just sending those plastic cups to the landfills and incinerators, just like everything else,” city of Albany chief auditor Sam Fein said. “Who can reduce the amount of plastic in the amount of packaging that we’re using. And that makes a real impact. That makes a real fiscal impact on cities like Albany. [The] city of Albany has a landfill that we’ve had for years. It’s set to close in 2028. And when that landfill closes, we’re going to have to spend millions of dollars to build a transfer station. And then every year, we’re going to have to spend a lot of money to ship that trash out wherever, whether it’s to a landfill or incinerator; of course, then that trash will continue to have an environmental impact. So passing the packaging, the Packaging and Plastic Reduction Act not only helps the environment reduces our waste, but it also helps cities like Albany, cities throughout the municipalities throughout the state that do spend a lot of money to dispose of our trash.”
The protests follow an extensive investigation conducted by the environmental advocacy group Beyond Plastics. Over an eight-month period, the group placed 69 Bluetooth trackers inside single-use Starbucks cups and dropped them into designated recycling bins at stores across the country. Out of 47 tracked cups, not a single one was confirmed to have reached a recycling facility…