Starbucks to phase out plastic straws at all stores by 2020

Vancouver Starbucks locations will be the first in Canada to serve drinks without plastic straws as it works to eliminate the product from all its stores by 2020, the company announced Monday.

The coffee chain is the latest big company to acknowledge the environmental threat plastic straws pose and vow to implement an alternative in the face of rising public pressure.

Starbucks will make a strawless lid or straws made from alternative materials, like paper of compostable plastic, available at its more than 28,000 stores worldwide by 2020. It has created a strawless lid that will be standard for its iced coffee, tea and espresso drinks.

“This is a significant milestone to achieve our global aspiration of sustainable coffee, served to our customers in more sustainable ways,” said CEO Kevin Johnson in a statement.

The strawless lid is found in more than 8,000 Canadian and U.S. sites for some beverages.

The Seattle-based company will implement the lids for all cold, non-blended drinks first at its hometown and Vancouver locations this fall, with phased rollouts within the U.S. and Canada to follow next year. A global rollout of the strawless lids will follow, beginning in Europe where the will be used in select stores in France and the Netherlands, as well as in the United Kingdom.

It’s the largest food and beverage company to do so as calls to cut waste globally grow louder with plastic straws one of the biggest targets.

Some cities, including Seattle and Fort Myers, banned plastic straws. Vancouver will prohibit plastic straws as well as some other items by June 1, 2019 as part of the Zero Waste 2040 Strategy.

Similar proposals are being considered in places like New York and San Francisco, as well as by the European Union.

Partly in response to changing municipal regulations and partly due to growing consumer pressure, the issue is coming up in company boardrooms.

While plastic drinking straws have become one of the more high-profile issues environmentally, they make up only about four per cent of the plastic trash by number of pieces, and far less by weight.