Peer response to the annotated bibliography

Peer response to the annotated bibliography 

Annotated bibliography: Starbucks wastes beyond the control 

As a current shift supervisor at a Starbucks corporate store, I’ve come to realize that the 

waste produced by this company is beyond control. For a hot latte sold at the store for example 

we use a disposable cup, disposable lid, disposable sleeve and most likely a disposable stopper. 

Every sandwich sold at the store comes prepackaged and needs to sit on a disposable 

piece of parchment paper in the oven and subsequently put in a disposable bag so it can be put on 

the customers hands. 

The amount of trash produced by the company is enormous but part of it I find very unnecessary. 

A lot of these disposable products are recyclable; however, recycling is not only time consuming 

but varies a lot depending on the region the store is located. Customers have very little 

encouragement to reduce the use of all the packaging and not even the cup discount and the 

rewards earned when a reusable clean cup is brought to the store has been enough incentive to 

significantly reduce the use of disposable cups. Sometime in 2019 the company removed the 

recycle trash bin for customers in stores in my district, stating that they were useless since we 

mostly rely on local recycling programs to properly continue with the cycle. 

Lamagna, Maria. “Takeout food is creating a trash epidemic” New York Post Jan 16, 

2018. https://nypost.com/2018/01/16/takeout-food-is-creating-a-trash-epidemic/

This article reinforces the idea that waste produced by fast food not only significantly impacts 

our planet but also that recycling in the US is low compared to other countries. 

https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015

08/documents/reducing_wasted_food_pkg_tool.pdf/ . 

This package provided by epa.gov gives us an estimate of how high food packaging 

contributes to landfill and the sad reality that a lot of animals end up eating some of these items 

and get hurt or die.