Creating to waste

I’ve given up caffeine for January as part of a new year’s health kick, so it’s unsurprising that, coffee addict as I am, my eyes were drawn to the announcement of the new Starbucks Trenta coffee cup, which at 31oz contains more liquid than the average human stomach.

Several commentators have raised legitimate concerns about obesity and the trend towards super-sizing of portions. And the role that beverages play in an unhealthy diet is a huge cause for concern, as they tend to be overlooked when people consider their dietary intake. But I want to raise another issue, which I’m going to call ‘creating to waste’.

Let’s think about what that drink looks like compared to some more familiar drinks: it’s roughly equivalent to 1.5 (UK) pints, or 1 and a quarter bottles of wine, or 2 and a half cans of soft drink. Can anyone really drink that much coffee?

Yes, people do sit and work their way through higher volumes in a pub on a Friday night and, of course, by definition there are a lot of people whose stomachs are larger than average. But for the most part people can’t, and won’t, drink this quantity of coffee – even if it is iced.

Which means that a lot of people who buy this cup will be doing so for novelty, to see if they can drink that much, then discover that they can’t and then throw it away. They’ll rise to the bait of the barista “are you sure you don’t want a Trenta, sir?”. It’s a sales ploy, a challenge – “can you drink this much?”.

So here is a product which has been created in order to be wasted.

Starbucks is proud of its sustainability credentials. It makes marketing mileage out of its ethical sourcing policy, its community initiatives and its environmental policies. It ranks on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.

But sustainability is more than the sum of your policies. No company can claim to be truly sustainable until it thinks through the actual products and services that it offers. And a product which is created to be wasted can never be sustainable.