Fruit smoothie chain Jamba Juice has unveiled a timeline for eliminating its use of Styrofoam cups after receiving a petition started by a 10-year-old girl.
During her summer vacation, Mia Hansen started a petition using online campaign platform Change.org, urging the chain to replace its Styrofoam cups with an environmentally friendly alternative. More than 130,000 people signed her petition, the web site said.
Following the petition Jamba Juice contacted the fifth grader to let her know that they intend to phase out the use of Styrofoam by the end of 2013.
The company says that it had been working for over a year prior to the petition to create a more suitable and sustainable cup.
Mia’s petition, titled “Jamba Juice: Stop using Styrofoam cups that kill animals!,” asserts that “in the ocean, several animals think that this product is food, so when they go to eat it, the Styrofoam can kill them!”
The petition’s page also says that Jamba Juice does not use Styrofoam cups in cities such as Seattle that don’t allow the product’s use. In October last year, Foster City in San Mateo County, Calif., banned the use of Styrofoam cups, matching an ordinance already on the books covering unincorporated San Mateo County, according to the The Daily Journal.
Jamba Juice spokeswoman Janice Duis confirmed to the Journal that the company was switching its Foster City location to paper cups. Around 60 Jamba Juice locations in the East Bay area already use the paper cups, the news report said.
In June, Eco-Products launched what it calls the first reusable “event” cup made from post-consumer recycled content. The cup is made from 25 percent post-consumer recycled polypropolene and saw its first use at Planet Bluegrass’s 39th Annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Telluride, Colo., in July.
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