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PepsiCo and Starbucks announce goals for reuse

Matt Prindiville & Miriam Gordon

What does this mean for the Reuse Movement?

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In the last month, some BIG brands who have been major players in the throw-away economy made historic announcements about their goals to move to reuse.

It started with Coca-Cola's reveal of a target to deliver 25% of its beverages in refillable bottles by 2030. Now, just a few weeks later, its major competitor, PepsiCo, announced that it will adopt a target for delivering products in refillable packaging by the end of the year. We and our partners have been working to help and pressure the food service and beverage industries to begin shifting from single-use to reuse, and this work is clearly paying off.

More Good News

In other good news, Starbucks also just announced that by 2025, they want every customer to be able to either bring their own cup or borrow a reusable cup from their cafes. While Starbucks has made and then failed to reach commitments around reuse in the past, this is the first time that they publicly acknowledged that their signature disposable cups are a problem. The fact that they also are testing out adding disposable cup charges to incentivize reusables is not only a big shift in thinking for Starbucks, it reflects a policy approach that Upstream has been encouraging. It's time to stop subsidizing throw-away culture by giving consumers disposables for free.

Financial Incentives to Reuse

We recognize that creating financial incentives for returning the packaging will be critical for ensuring that the reusable packaging doesn’t wind up in the garbage or environment. The options are:

  1. Deposit-return systems - like an up-front charge that you get back when the cup is returned

  2. Other financial rewards - like a discount off your coffee purchase for returning the cup, or

  3. Financial penalties - like a charge if the cup isn’t returned within a certain amount of time.

Companies will need to experiment to determine which options work best for their customers, staff and systems.

Regardless of which financial incentive is chosen, we want to make sure that new reuse systems are accessible and available to all, which will likely require some accommodations. We will continue to grapple with these questions in our networks and coalitions and search for equity-focused solutions.

Changing the game – from the ground up

Consumer brands, beverage, and fast food companies are all feeling the pressure from campaigns targeting their role in plastic pollution, overconsumption and waste. There is an increasing acceptance that substituting single-use plastic for other single-use materials just trades one set of environmental problems for others.

In addition, several of these companies have publicly shared that more recycling by itself is not enough to lead to their environment and sustainability goals around waste, plastics and the circular economy. The acknowledgement that recycling is important, but nowhere near enough, is a game-changer. It forces companies to rethink how they deliver consumable products and opens up the possibilities for reuse.

Some of the biggest kudos go to the global #breakfreefromplastic movement for highlighting Coke and Pepsi as the top plastic polluters globally – with Starbucks being among the top 3 in the U.S. In particular, we want to acknowledge our friends at As You Sow for the additional shareholder pressure on Pepsi and Coke. These big brand commitments, we believe, are in large part, a response to being called out as global polluters and the pressure exerted on them to change.

However, we also looked at a best case scenario, in which the cup is made from 100% recycled aluminum and 100% of the cups are collected for recycling post-event. Even in this completely optimal scenario, single-use aluminum still had twice as many climate emissions as single-use plastic. And reusable polypropylene cups that are used 50 times created 24 times less carbon pollution than the single-use aluminum; reusable stainless steel used 50 times generated 18 times less carbon pollution.

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