Dive Brief:

• In 2008, Starbucks announced it would offer recycling at all retail locations by 2015.
• Last week, the coffee company announced in its 2013 Global Sustainability Report that it would not be capable of reaching that goal by 2015, and in fact may never attain that level of recycling. 
• Currently, nine stores have implemented a recycling program. According to numbers released by the company, as of 2012 Starbucks operates 10,924 stores, with 19,767 stores worldwide as of September 29, 2013. 

Dive Insight:

Problems meeting the recycling goals include issues with removing the plastic lining from cups in order to transform the used cups into a new item.

Consumers also do not throw away a high enough volume of cups to be considered profitable to recycle at a facility. The vice-president of strategy and category effectiveness at Georgia-Pacific paper company said in a 2011 interview that all of the paper used in Starbucks cups in one year amounts to less than a week's worth of production at the paper mills.