Beyond Plastics used Bluetooth trackers in 53 polypropylene cups at 35 Starbucks locations; 0 of 36 tracked cups reached a recycling facility.
Key Takeaways
Cups placed in Starbucks’ own in-store recycling bins ended at landfills (16), incinerators (9), waste-transfer stations (8), or material recovery facilities (3) that sort but do not recycle.
The “widely recyclable” label comes from How2Recycle, a retailer- and packaging-industry program with no FTC or federal oversight.
Polypropylene (No. 5 plastic) has roughly 5 commercially operating recycling facilities in the entire US; contamination rates (~31% in California) far exceed the 2% KW Plastics accepts.
11 of the 21 target states had Starbucks stores with no recycling at all, or signage routing cups to landfill only, undermining the “60% of US households can recycle curbside” claim.
One cup traveled 463 miles from a Brooklyn Starbucks to a landfill in Amsterdam, Ohio.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters raised a core methodology flaw: Bluetooth trackers are non-recyclable contaminants, meaning MRF sorters correctly rejected the cups, making “none reached recycling” partly self-fulfilling.
The sample is geographically concentrated – 8 trackers from urban New York, 6 from a single Olympia WA location – and trackers frequently stopped transmitting mid-route, so “none pinged from a recycling facility” overstates certainty.
Broader consensus held that No. 5 plastic recycling is functionally nonexistent at scale in the US regardless of methodology, and How2Recycle’s label carries no regulatory weight.
Notable Comments
@hamdingers: Bluetooth trackers are themselves non-recyclable, so MRFs rejecting the cups may reflect correct sorting, not greenwashing evidence.
@rileymat2: Reports that at his local Starbucks all three bins – two labeled recycling, one trash – are consolidated into the same dumpster nightly.
