Shop Talk

Check Out Line: Bring a mug, get free Starbucks java, save the world

Check out how Starbucks is working to persuade you to help save the planet by using fewer of its iconic paper cups.

On Thursday the company, which hands out about 4.75 million cups a day, is giving away free coffee to everyone who brings in a reusable mug or travel tumbler.

This latest promotion from the world’s biggest coffee chain comes as it works to hit its goal of serving one-fourth of its beverages in reusable cups by 2015.

The ubiquity of Starbucks coffee cups make them a powerful advertising vehicle. But the company’s popularity also has a dark side — discarded Starbucks cups contribute to pollution by creating tons of trash.

“Changing a habit is hard,” Cliff Burrows, president of Starbucks’ U.S. business, told Reuters at the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference in Southern California this week. “We can’t incentivize it more than free.”

Ben Packard, Starbucks’ vice president of global responsibility, said the company is taking a page from the grocery industry’s sustainability playbook.

“We want to do for the coffee cup what happened with the grocery bag,” Packard said, referring to the supermarkets industry success convincing many consumers to bring in their own shopping bags, rather than taking a new plastic bag with each visit.

Check Out Line: A greener eBay?

Check Out eBay’s steps toward becoming more environmentally friendly.

The online auctioneer announced its first greenhouse gas emissions reduction target on Monday, saying it has committed to a 15-percent cut to its corporate emissions by 2012, over a 2008 baseline.

EBay said it will achieve that target through continuing investments in renewable energy and promoting “sustainable” habits tied to the travel and personal energy use of its 15,000-strong workforce.

EBay said that as an online company, a majority of its carbon footprint comes from the energy used at its data centers.  So, tackling data management and infrastructure will be key to becoming more efficient.  To that end, the company will unveil a “green” data center in 2010.  EBay also said it will announce a fuel cell strategy in early 2010.

Among the initiatives taken by its employees — a community garden project, participating in “National Cycle to Work” week and electronics recycling, with over 8,200 pounds of personal electronic equipment.

Also in the basket:

Too late to catch the turnaround train at eBay?

For Father’s Day, suit shows greener side of Sears

Hey guys, this isn’t your pop’s polyester.

Just in time for Father’s Day shopping, Sears will roll out a line of men’s suits made of the first high-tech fabric that blends wool with polyester spun from recycled plastic soda bottles.

The suit separates, sold under Sears’ Covington Perfect brand, will be on racks in about 500 U.S. Sears stores in May.  Price: $175 for the jacket and $75 for the pants, according to Tim Danser, vice president of marketing for Bagir Group Ltd., the Israeli manufacturer that tailors the garments for Sears’ private label.

And get this: This suit is machine washable and can be tossed in the dryer, eliminating the need for dry cleaning and upping the eco-friendly ante, Danser said.

“This isn’t the polyester of the 1970s,” Moses Cohen, sales and marketing manager for N.I. Teijin Shoji (USA), Inc., the New York arm of Teijin, the Japanese chemical company that makes the suit fabric, said during a men’s fashion briefing at the swanky Kitano Hotel on Park Avenue in Manhattan.

Teijin, which developed fabrics made of recycled plastic blended with wool, viscose and cotton or with other synthetics, also partners with retailers to recycle used polyester clothing back into fabric and new clothes.

“This has a nicer hand to it,” Cohen said, running his fingers over the sleeve of his own jacket, acknowledging that “polyester still has some bad connotations” due to the quality of the “disco era” fabric of more than 30 years ago. (For devotees of the 1981 cult comedy film, “Polyester,” this is your cue: Thanks a lot, John Waters!)

How green is your coffee habit?

Despite the wide range of organic and other “green” coffee on the market, 67 percent of coffee drinkers who frequent coffee shops admit to discarding used paper cups into a regular trash can rather than a recycling bin, according to a new survey of 1007 Internet users conducted by Kelton Research and commissioned by Tata Group’s Good Earth Coffee. That means about 28 billion cups (100 million pounds of paper) end up in U.S. landfills every year.

The study also showed that 42 percent of Americans believe it takes less time for a paper coffee cup to decompose (20 years) than a newspaper (2 weeks). Not to mention the fact that many paper coffee cups can’t be recycled or composted because of the materials with which they are coated.

More than 30 percent of survey respondents said they were willing to pay extra for organic coffee or coffee that came in an eco-friendly container.

Meanwhile, the weak U.S. economy appears to be making a dent when it comes to improving the environment. That’s because the biggest consumer trend in coffee is brewing your own at home — maybe saving some green will also help save the planet.

(Photo: Reuters)