Latest / The Operations Podcast with Fexingo: Process, People, and Profit in Modern Business
How A Coffee Chain Turned Empty Cups Into Revenue
Starbucks faced a quiet crisis in late 2025: millions of discarded seasonal cups were clogging landfills and draining margins. Instead of just recycling, the company partnered with a materials science startup to turn those specific poly-coated paper cups into durable pavement additives for parking lots across the Midwest. This episode breaks down the unit economics of that waste-to-value pipeline, showing how turning a twenty-cent disposal cost into a twelve-cent material credit changed their sustainability reporting and operational overhead. We look at the logistics of collection, the…
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