Starbucks introduced paper cups in 1984, when it had just seven stores, as part of its transition from an artisanal roaster to the world's biggest specialty-coffee chain. It has taken various steps over the years to mitigate the environmental impact of its packaging. In 1997 (1,270 stores), Starbucks introduced the recycled cardboard-brown hot-beverage sleeve to cut down on double cupping. It fought the FDA for more than two years to get approval for the first hot-beverage packaging featuring 10% postconsumer recycled content. That cup, introduced in 2006 (12,440 stores), won the National Recycling Coalition's annual award. In 2008 (16,680 stores), Starbucks switched its plastic cups from polyethylene (No. 1) to polypropylene (No. 5), which uses 45% less greenhouse gases. As the company has grown, its cup-disposal problem "got to be a bee in the bonnet of [CEO] Howard Schultz," says Senge, the MIT business professor whose management philosophy book, The Fifth Discipline, is a worldwide best seller that popularized the concepts "learning organization" and "systems thinking." Senge originally got to know Starbucks through his work with the Sustainable Food Lab, a global network of NGOs and companies that work on international supply-chain-management practices around products like fair-trade coffee and cocoa. "These are the best NGOs and the best people in business around sourcing and food systems," he says. "They regard Starbucks as being as good as anybody in coffee."
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