By Anastasia Ovchinnikov.
It’s mid-July, scorching hot pavements, the sun is bright and out and the moment you set foot outside you start sweating instantly. I personally love the summer. You get a whole season full of weekend camping/beach trips, tanning and ice cold drinks. Speaking of ice cold drinks, Starbucks menus reach their peak in the summer, with the best drinks of the year all being put up on the menu once again. You get so much variety, from iced peach black tea to cold brewed coffee with caramel. There’s a drink for everyone. I know Starbucks may be considered on the pricier side, but what makes summer even more better, is the discount deals at Starbucks. New deals every week. All this talk about Starbucks, I might as well just head over there.
As I walk in, I’m not surprised to see a huge line. Everyone wants that Summer Starbucks Experience. That hissing sound of espresso machines and the grumbling of the blenders is music to my ears. Not to be dramatic but when it’s practically 38 degrees outside, the sound of ice cold drinks being made really does sound soothing. So I’m standing in line and all of a sudden my phone vibrates. I pull it out of my pocket to check my notification and it’s almost like my phone is encrypted with some sort of tracker, it already knows I’m at Starbucks. It’s a mobile newspaper notification from the Globe and Mail, it reads; “The massive coffee company Starbucks, produces almost 8000 cups every minute, almost 95% of those cups are sent off to landfills and take around 20 years to decompose.” I look at my phone in disgust. 20 years to decompose?! I haven’t even been alive for 20 years! And 8000 cups per minute?! I turn my phone off and shove it back into my pocket. I look around, paper cups and thin plastic cups everywhere. Green straws filling up each trash can to the brim. I get it, you want that Starbucks experience to the fullest by getting that branded white cup, with the green siren logo, I get it. But isn’t there some other way to do it, without killing off our planet with 8000 cups per minute? I look around frantically. I don’t want to leave, but I don’t want to drink out of a cup for 5 minutes and throw it away so that it ends up rotting in a landfill for 2 decades. I keep looking around until a girl walks by with a metal cup, with the classic green logo on it. It’s metal. It’s reusable. “Excuse me, where did you get that cup?”
“Oh it’s right at the front there is a small shelf, it’s only 15.99 plus you get 20% off on your drink everytime you bring your cup in.” She replies.
“Thank you so much.” she smiles and walks away. It’s my turn to order and I get my usual Mango Dragon Fruit with coconut milk instead of water but this time I get it in a beautiful metal cup with peacock feathers painted all over it.
“That’ll be 18.99,” said the cashier.
“Is it true that everytime I bring my cup in I get 20% off my order?” The cashier nods. So now I got a beautiful cup that is reusable and I end up paying less than everybody else. Sounds pretty good to me. They hand me back my cup with my ice cold drink and I head out of the Starbucks back into the blazing heat.
I take a sip of my drink and maybe i’m crazy, but my drink tastes different, although I get it all the time, for some reason it tastes really, really good. It’s probably the fact that I helped turn that 8000 cups per minute into 7999 cups per minute, I may be just another 1 in a million who actually bought a reusable cup but that’s still something.
Suddenly a couple comes up to me,
“Hi, sorry to bother you but do you know any good gift ideas from Starbucks? Our daughter is your age and it’s her birthday soon,” said the father.
“Oh ya for sure, they have these customizable, reusable cups and they give you a discount everytime you bring your cup in.” The couple thank me and run into the coffee shop. I guess that 8000 just dropped to 7998. Now that’s what I call the True Starbucks Experience.