3B Plastic Cups Undoing Green Mountain's Image

Business is booming for Green Mountain Coffee (today brings more good news, via Bloomberg) but the company has much work to do to shore up its once unblemished green image, writes Olivia Khalili at Cause Capitalism. The problem is that most of its profit now comes from one-use-only plastic coffee "pods" that are neither recyclable nor biodegradable. And the company expects to sell 3 billion of them.

Green Mountain has a solid 30-year record of "progressive sustainability," writes Khalili, but that could be undone in the public's eye quickly. Its lame justification that the cups actually have an environmental benefit by reducing coffee waste won't cut it. GMC must own up to the problem and produce solutions instead of excuses. "We can learn a lot from what happens next," she writes. "Let’s just hope it’s a story of What To Do Right." (More sustainability stories.)