Screw it, I'm not even going to finish that sentence because I know that I can't stick to it... Let's just get this over with.
I am fed up. I am MASSIVELY fed up, and I am annoyed that when I try and vent my fed-up-ness it gets put down to rant-y women or rant-y vegetarians or event just rant-y environmentalists. Yeah, aren't all of the above people such butt holes for wanting to make the world a less crappy place? Anyway, this is not about that, this is about:
REALLY STARBUCKS, REALLY???
Okay, so forget for two minutes that Starbucks is expensive. Forget for a minute that a lot of people cannot afford to buy food, let alone the luxury that is take out coffee (because I can only keep a lid on the lava of my personality if I only have a Venti Mocha Chocolate Rant about one thing at once. Single shots, people. (I'm sorry. I'm funny in my own head!)
Taking all of the above off the table and any other issues you have with Starbucks (be it tax avoidance or them charging London Fire Brigade staff for water during the July bombings, because I know that was also pretty unforgivable) and having a clean slate: why is it my problem as a consumer to carry around a reuseable cup to use in your cafe? Okay, it's a five pence charge and actually that makes most of your drinks cost an even whatever instead of me getting five pence pieces in my change (I don't, because I live in London and never really carry cash, but just go with it for a second) but Starbucks, why is this my issue?
I know, you've tried to make it easy for me by making a reuseable cup with your "legendary" design, it's only a pound and there is normally a basket of them sitting somewhere where I can conveniently grab one in the store. You're even so nice as to offer me a 25 pence "discount" if I reuse this or any other reusable cup, but actually, it's five pence. I'm probably only going to give a monkey's left proverbial because you haven't previously charged me for this and we all hate price hikes. And Starbucks, I know it's not just you. Pret do the same damn thing (actually, in some ways they are worse, because they provide biodegradable cutlery only in their Veggie stores and not across the whole brand and still called it a trial on Facebook the other day despite the fact that veggie Pret has been open for a significant period of time (not completely sure if it's one or two years on the original place now, but still - how long is this blooming trial???
My big issue is, it's a token effort. I hate token effort.
Suppliers of biodegradable and compostable cups and lids and cutlery all exist. Instead of encouraging a behaviour change in your consumers which is unlikely to have a big enough effect to prevent whales from starving to death with stomach's full of plastic bags of us using a ridiculous amount of landfill to essentially bury and forget about our sins, why not just make the change yourselves? Okay, so not every cup is going to go into a compost pile, there might still be a significant number ending up in the ocean, but at least it's not made of something that is likely to outlast the sun. At least it is far less damaging than what we currently have.
Or how about, do both?
How about you switch to these kind of cups and lids and cutlery and other packaging and then say, we screwed up. We as humanity screwed up when we started to rely on plastic, because it was easy. And to pay for our screw ups, we are going to donate money from every drink sold to research into sustainable resources, or ocean clean up projects. Hell, we're even going to get rid of our plastic gift cards and find something more sustainable there, too?
I'm quite lucky that I can get this out of my system. I read an article over the weekend that fish even at a very deep sea level have ingested micro beads and plastic, and they can't get it out of their systems. I know I mentioned this earlier but a whale died because it had 30 plastic bags in its stomach last year and it was assumed that it starved to death. This is madness. This is utter madness. I don't give a flying **** (I can't replace that word right now, I'm livid) about token effort right now!!
I feel the same way about the plastic bag charge as well and straws - don't even get me started on straws...
(taking deep breathes for a second)
I know we have some level of choice in these issues, because we can use reusable cups and just make the effort, same with bags, and we use them for their lifetime and it's LESS plastic (because ultimately as lot of the alternative bags for life and reusable cups are also plastic) but there are alternatives. Companies could choose to make a real difference and inevitably I don't feel that they put in enough effort.
I know that they're not going to read this, but I just had to get it off my chest. #rantover
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