Starbucks announced last week that it was testing out which sustainable cup option would be more useful and efficient, either through the “borrow-a-cup program” or by bringing your own reusable cup.

In its annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday, the coffee chain revealed that it will test multiple different versions of these options in test markets to see what will work best to tackle its ongoing concern of becoming more sustainable.

"Our cup is ubiquitous, and we love that," said Michael Kobori, Starbucks chief sustainability officer. "But it is also this ubiquitous symbol of a throwaway society."

Starbucks had previously labored through a bad environmental reputation when it came to recycling. By 2014, the company was running through 4 billion paper cups annually, with most of the cups never recycled, causing an outcry from environmental groups. A major stumbling block was cups' plastic lining to prevent leakage, which was costly and difficult to remove.

Despite not reaching some of its environmental goals, Starbucks in 2020 was targeting 50% reductions in carbon emissions, water withdrawal, and waste sent to landfills,

New concerns recently restarted over its single-use straws, which Starbucks would phase out with “sippy cup” lids. Starbucks then started to encourage customers to bring in their own reusable cups, but this was interrupted by the pandemic.

The borrow-a-cup program would charge customers a $1 deposit to “borrow a cup,” and to get back their money back they would need to return the cup to a smart bin. The returned cups would then be cleaned by a third-party company to be used again. The reusable cup option is being explored through dropping off your cup before reaching the final window, or premaking the drink to pour into your cup.

The goal is to incentivize more people to consider these options as “more attractive,” than the single-use cups by 2025, through discounts and rewards but Starbucks doesn’t plan on getting rid of the paper and plastic cups altogether.

“What we’ve learned from our consumer research is that even the most ardent champions of sustainability really do not claim that they carry a reusable cup around with them,” Amelia Landers, Starbucks’ vice president of product innovation, said in an interview with CNBC.

Getting customers to switch over to sustainable cups has been a struggle for Starbucks. The company has given discounts to customers to bring their own cup, but most still forget, or it’s just not as accessible.

These other options must be explored for a noticeable difference to be made because system-wide issues have also arisen when it comes to making a “recyclable” cup. Even if a cup is fully recyclable, sometimes the cup will never make it to a recycling center.

“Starbucks can make the best compostable, recyclable cup and it’ll never be composted or recycled if the rest of the system doesn’t change,” Ben Packard, a former Starbucks vice president, told CNN in February 2019. “They cannot change the system by themselves.”

While the cups remain a large part of Starbucks' global footprint, the company believes if they can get more customers to be aware of using a more sustainable option, it can really make a difference in overall waste.

“The cup is 20% of our waste footprint globally, but more than that, it is an icon,” Kobori told CNBC. “This is Starbucks’ icon all around the world, and if we can replace this disposable cup, this symbol of waste, with this reusable, we completely change people’s mindset. And at Starbucks, we can really set an example and change the whole industry.”