[ramesh31]

>But in my opinion the best solution is to have people bring their own cups and just reuse them, and unfortunately only a small percent of people do that.

You could also just make your own coffee at home and cut out the entire environmental impact of doing business with a wasteful company at all. But this doesn't solve the problem of "I'm somewhere with no coffee, and I want coffee" which Starbucks does. Focusing on making their cups sustainable is probably a much better solution than expecting people to lug around coffee mugs all day.

[exhilaration]

Arguably, from an environmental and resources standpoint, isn't it better to centralize coffee-making in a few coffee shops rather everyone having their own coffee making equipment at home?

[Jtsummers]

How could that possibly be better environmentally? You're introducing a great deal more commuting (remember, most of the US is not walkable, people aren't walking to coffee shops and their places of work) and idle time for vehicles. And if the shops are consuming a great deal of single-use resources it will produce more waste than making coffee at home, where most people have mugs.

[ramesh31]

From a pure energy standpoint, simple thermodynamics would dictate he's right. Producing industrial quantities of coffee in a commercial brewer would be much more efficient than individual coffee pots. However all the confounding factors you mention probably balance it in favor of home production.

[Jtsummers]

If we're only considering the energy required to brew the coffee, perhaps. But we cannot neglect the energy required to get to the coffee. It makes no sense to have people go out of their way to get a cup of coffee from a shop when they can brew pots of it at home without ever needing to turn on their car (except to get more beans or grounds, typically done with a grocery run so the energy cost is very small in comparison to shops).

It could maybe make sense for commuters who have shops on their way to their place of work and who only want one cup of coffee at the start of their work day. But this completely neglects everyone who:

1. Works from home (or doesn't work)

2. Doesn't have a shop that's on their way to their workplace

3. Wants more than one cup of coffee

[alecst]

My specific proposal is about giving you the option to buy a cup if you want it, and not if you don't. Everybody wins!