Starbucks Selling $1 Reusable Cups

Starbucks fans can do their part to help the company with its green efforts.

The coffee giant last Thursday began selling $1 reusable plastic cups at all of its company-owned North American cafes in a push to reduce waste, reported the Los Angeles Times.  

The cups bear the company logo.  They are available in grande or tall size, 16-ounce and 12-ounce sizes respectively.  Those who use the cup or any other reusable container will receive a 10-cent discount for each refill and a boiling-water cleanse for their recyclable receptacle, the newspaper reported.

The company tested the cups at 600 stores in the Pacific Northwest beginning in October.  The region had a 26 percent increase in reusable cup usage in November compared to the same period in 2011, the Times reported.  The trend towards using reusable cups saw a 55 percent hike in the last three years at Starbucks, the company told the newspaper.

Starbucks also announced Thursday that it plans to start selling Square mobile card readers in 7,000 company-owned stores, the Times reported.  The devices, coupled with the free Square Register app, enables iPhone, iPad, and Android users to accept credit card transactions using their mobile devices.  The stores will sell the readers for $10, with a $10 rebate at sign up for new users.