ways to enjoy your Starbucks coffee


When you fill your cup at Starbucks, you’re not just getting great coffee. You’re making a more sustainable choice and part of a bigger movement to help our planet by reducing waste.
Starbucks is making it easier for you to enjoy your favorite beverage while also keeping more waste out of landfills. At our cafes throughout the U.S. and Canada, you have a variety of sustainable cup options to choose from.
- “For-Here” Cups: When you order any beverage “for here” (including coffee, tea, and all specialty beverages) in our company-owned stores with cafe seating, it will be served in a coffee mug or glass.
- Personal Cups: Starbucks is the first and only national coffeehouse in the U.S. to allow you to bring your clean personal cup—whether it’s a reusable tumbler, thermos, or travel mug. You can use it for every visit to company-owned and licensed stores in the U.S. and Canada, including drive-thru and mobile orders.
- Returnable Cups: We’re currently testing reusable cups in more than 30 markets worldwide. For instance, in Petaluma, California, we piloted a program that makes reusables the default option for to-go drinks across an entire city.
- Commercially Compostable Cups: In select markets, Starbucks provides more environmentally friendly compostable cups and lids.
Starbucks is committed to creating a welcoming community coffeehouse where people gather and stay. Any first beverage ordered in a “for here” cup or personal cup is welcome to free refills of hot or iced brewed coffee and tea during their same day visit to that cafe.

Reusable revolution
We are making it easier for customers to use reusable cups and help reduce cup waste sent to landfills. Since the option became available for customers to order with a personal cup for every visit in the U.S., nearly 400,000 Starbucks Rewards members have brought in a personal cup, including 150,000 customers for the first time, and 20% of baristas are using a personal cup for their shift beverage.
- We are making it easier for customers to use reusable cups and help reduce cup waste sent to landfills.
- Our sustainable cup innovation helps us take measurable strides toward future goals: 50% waste reduction and shift single use consumer-facing packaging to Recyclable or Compostable by 2030.
- We’re collaborating with partners, customers and community business leaders to identify impactful ways to reduce waste and accelerate reuse as a key component of the circular economy.
Did you know?
Since introducing the option for customers to use a personal cup for every visit in the U.S., Starbucks has helped eliminate on average two million cups per month from waste streams. Over 1.6 million Starbucks Rewards members have brought in their personal cups, with nearly one million doing so for the first time.
Towards a more sustainable cup
We’ve set an ambitious goal for our cups to be 100% compostable, recyclable, or reusable; sourced from 50% recycled materials; and made using 50% less virgin fossil fuel derived sources by 2030. In the U.S. and Canada, we’re rolling out a more sustainable and accessible cold cup made with 10-20% less plastic – just one way we’re driving single-use packaging innovation.


In addition, Starbucks supports sustainable packaging policies that:
- Help reduce waste sent to landfills by supporting improved recycling and organics diversion.
- Help accelerate reuse as a key component of the circular economy.
- Reduce complexity and promote circularity by setting globally harmonized definitions and standards.

Compostable cold cups
Select Starbucks stores are switching to commercially compostable cold cups and lids, as part of our sustainability goals, commitment to innovation and local efforts to help reduce waste. Learn more about some of the features below.

Starbucks is developing compostable cold cups and lids. The new cups are made from fiber-based paper board with a bioplastic liner, which makes them opaque.

Both Flat and dome lids are available.
They are made from molded Fiber.

Cups are double-walled
This provides insulation and reduces condensation.

Caring for our planet
The cups are another step towards our ambitious environmental goals to reduce waste in stores.
This product is only compostable at commercial facilities. Such facilities may not exist in your area. Cup graphics may vary.
*Some of the initiatives mentioned above are in development
**Free refill on hot and iced brewed coffee and tea during same store visit. Excludes Cold Brew and Nitro Cold Brew, Iced Tea Lemonade, flavored Iced Tea and Starbucks Refreshers® base. Initial purchase must be made in a reusable cup or “for-here” serveware. At participating stores.