This fall, it will send cups used at its Chicago stores to Green Bay, where a Georgia Pacific paper mill will turn them into Starbucks napkins. The effort is a major push by Starbucks to create a commercial market for its used cups, which include 1 billion plastic cups for cold drinks.

Over the past few weeks, it has put recycle and compost bins into 90 Seattle stores to comply with a new city ordinance.

By Thursday, every grocery store, restaurant and coffee shop in Seattle will be required to recycle and compost, and to provide recyclable or compostable to-go packaging for everything from ground beef to lattes. The new ordinance will prevent 6,000 tons of food and service ware from piling onto garbage heaps. Starbucks’ cups also are recycled or composted in San Francisco and Ontario, because of laws there.

In areas without such mandates, commercial demand determines which products are recycled.

“The biggest roadblock to recycling is the lack of demand” for old paper, said Jim Hanna, Starbucks’ director of environmental impact and global responsibility. “We need to create demand for recyclers for our products.”

The effort is similar to something Coca-Cola has done in South Carolina, where it invested $60 million in a plant that makes soda pop bottles from old soda bottles and other recycled plastic.

Environmental activists at the As You Sow Foundation in San Francisco, which led a shareholder initiative earlier this year to push Starbucks to recycle more, is impressed with its latest efforts. The initiative received 11 percent of the vote, a healthy chunk considering that mutual funds and other institutions own three-quarters of Starbucks’ stock.

“Their goal is not just to have recycling bins in stores by 2015, but to find markets so all those paper cups actually get recycled,” said Conrad MacKerron, director of corporate social responsibility at the nonprofit. Finding a market for paper cups is harder than for items like aluminum cans, he said.

Read the full article here.

The U.S. Geological Survey has some insight into what lies beneath/near/on the Arctic Circle:

1. An estimated 90 billion barrels of recoverable oil
2. Enough oil to supply the WORLD’s needs for nearly 3 years.
3. Maybe 1.670 trillion cubic fee of natural gas
4. About 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil
5. About 30% of the world’s undiscovered natural gas
6. About 20% of the world’s undiscovered natural gas liquids
7. Some 400 oil and gas fields north of the Arctic Circle
8. The home to polar bears already losing their natural habitat to melting of their land
9. A possible cause for a conflict between Russia, Canada, Norway, Denmark and the United States who are laying claim to chunks of the huge energy resources.

So, should we go drilling or not? Remember what arthroscopic surgery can do before answering that question.

This story from Biodiesel Magazine says the money is from donors from all over the state:

The initial idea of the fundraiser was for donors to pledge five dollar amounts, signifying the approximate cost of a gallon of biodiesel. Iowans across the state, including biodiesel producers, marketers, and railroad companies all contributed to the effort.

Julie Vyskocil, a biofuels specialist with the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, said the support received from the biodiesel industry and Iowans, demonstrating their concern for a fellow Iowa community in need, was overwhelming. “Donating biodiesel was a unique and practical way that we could help Parkersburg,” Vyskocil said. “Iowa is the leader in renewable fuels production and it seemed fitting to donate fuel produced in the state of Iowa that would be necessary in the rebuilding process.”

The money will go toward buying biodiesel that runs the equipment that continues to cleanup and rebuild the town. If you remember the photo on the left from right after the storm happened at the end of May, the town doesn’t look like that anymore. But there’s still plenty of work to do. It’s nice to know that biodiesel will be part of that effort.