EVANSTON, Ill. --- Starbucks has pledged to phase out the use of plastic straws in its coffee shops around the world by 2020, opting for a new strawless lid and straws made out of non-plastic material. The company anticipates the change will eliminate more than one billion plastic straws each year from Starbucks locations.
Megan Kashner is a clinical professor of private-public interface in the Kellogg School of Management. She has more than 20 years of strategic management, community partnership building and organizational planning experience across nonprofits, philanthropy, volunteerism and corporate social engagement. She's also the director of Social Impact, which aims to shape socially responsible leaders.
Please contact Kashner by reaching out to Molly Lynch at 773-505-9719 or [email protected].
Quote from Professor Kashner
“With the Starbucks announcement on eliminating plastic straws, the company maintains its long-held position at the front edge of socially responsible corporate practices. From providing full benefits to part-time employees as far back as 1988, to paying toward college for staff, supporting initiatives and standards for coffee production and coffee farmers, engaging in dialogue about race and more, Starbucks takes steps before many others in the field. By taking this stance, the company illuminates the path forward and takes on the risks inherent to the early actor.”
Jennifer Dunn is a research associate professor in the McCormick School of Engineering and the director of research for the Northwestern Argonne Institute of Science and Engineering.
She has expertise in plastic waste including management practices in the U.S. and in other countries that are known contributors to the plastic waste in oceans. She studies emerging technologies, their energy and environmental impacts and their potential to influence air pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption and energy consumption at the economy-wide level.
Dunn can be reached at 312-404-3116 or [email protected].
Quote from Professor Dunn
“Plastic straws are particularly of concern in terms of overall plastic waste in the oceans, given threats to marine life. All plastic waste in the ocean is an environmental concern that could be addressed by lowering plastic consumption, improving waste collection practices in countries that have less developed systems, increasing recycling and considering other uses for waste plastics that aren’t recycled, such as pyrolyzing them to produce low-sulfur diesel fuel.”
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