The Brief

Starbucks customers across hundreds of locations in the United States started their weeks off with a surprise: Their beloved Frappuccinos and iced espresso drinks served in paper cups, not plastic.

The Seattle-based coffee company announced this week that about 580 of its stores had begun replacing its cold drinks cups — typically made out of polypropylene, a type of rigid plastic — with paper versions lined with a thin layer of bioplastic for liquid resistance.

A company spokesperson declined to provide a list of stores affected by the change, but said Starbucks wants to comply with the growing number of local ordinances restricting the distribution of single-use plastics. Some advocacy groups, however, have suggested that the transition away from polypropylene plastic cups is more connected to Starbucks’ own sustainability targets — specifically, a goal the company set last year to make all of its packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2030.

The company’s continued use of plastic seemed to hinge on the idea that the cups could technically fall under the recyclable category. Jan Dell, an independent chemical engineer and founder of the nonprofit the Last Beach Cleanup, says they’re not, and that Starbucks is now acknowledging it.

“This is a clear admission that polypropylene cups are not recyclable” — or, at least, that they don’t get recycled in practice, Dell told Grist.

Dell’s conclusion is based, in part, on an effort she spearheaded last year to see what happens to Starbucks’ plastic cups when deposited in the chain’s in-store recycling bins. She and a partner, Susan Keefe — now with the nonprofit Beyond Plastics — placed tracking devices in empty Starbucks cups across Southern California, dropped the cups off in the chain’s recycling bins, and followed their movements after they were picked up by waste trucks. In almost all cases, the trackers went to a landfill or an incinerator rather than a recycling center.

Her investigation was repeated on a larger scale by CBS News, which tracked cups dropped into 57 Starbucks recycling bins across the country. Of the 36 trackers that produced reliable location information, 32 last pinged at locations that appeared to be landfills, incinerators or waste transfer stations. Just four pinged at locations that appeared to be material recovery facilities, the places where used plastics are sorted for recycling.

A Starbucks spokesperson told Grist that the company’s polypropylene cups are “recyclable in many locations where there is local infrastructure.”

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Klaudia Radecka

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A Starbucks spokesperson told Grist that the company’s polypropylene cups are “recyclable in many locations where there is local infrastructure.” But it is unclear where such infrastructure exists.

Last year, CBS News reported that Starbucks was only able to list one facility that turns polypropylene plastic cups into new products, KW Plastics in Alabama. A 2022 Greenpeace report found that this facility has the capacity to recycle only about 1% of the United States’ total polypropylene waste, and may not accept polypropylene waste from states outside the Southeast due to transportation costs. Another limiting factor is the high rate of contamination with other types of plastic, or liquids and food residue. Polypropylene bales from California, for example, have an average contamination rate of 31% — far higher than the 2% contamination rate KW Plastics says it accepts.

KW Plastics did not respond to Grist’s request for comment. (An industry group told Grist there are several more polypropylene recycling facilities in the U.S., but a Grist review of the list it sent found inconsistencies: One facility said it doesn’t accept bales of polypropylene, for instance, and another appeared to not yet be operating.)

Considering all of the 160,000 tons of plastic cups and plates produced in the U.S. in 2018 — the last year for which federal data is available — about 81% was landfilled, and 19% was burned. That leaves roughly 0% for recycling: a “negligible” amount, as the Environmental Protection Agency puts it.

Dell said the high-profile investigations “embarrassed” Starbucks and may have contributed to its move away from polypropylene cups. The company knows its customers “want to feel good about their cold drink or their hot drink cups,” she said. “Consumers do not want to feel guilty.”

Lisa Ramsden, a senior oceans campaigner for Greenpeace, said Starbucks may also be trying to get ahead of anti-plastic regulations in California, which are expected to ban certain types of plastic in the coming years. Already, the state requires the substantiation of recyclability labels like the ubiquitous “chasing arrows” symbol, imprinted on Starbucks’ polypropylene cups and advertised on its in-store recycling bins. Companies that want to label their products as recyclable in the Golden State have to maintain written records explaining why they believe the recycling claim is true, and showing that those products are widely collected and turned into new products within California.

A Starbucks spokesperson said the company’s polypropylene cups are compliant with applicable consumer protection laws and declined to provide additional evidence that the cups are recycled. They said that recycling is “complex and challenging,” and that the company’s goal “is always to reduce the amount of plastic in our waste stream.”

Along with the move toward compostable paper cups, Starbucks, which is navigating a flurry of changes as its new chief executive attempts to improve the company’s image and bottom line, says it is making ceramic mugs available for in-store dining and allowing more customers to order drinks in their own reusable cups. As for Starbucks’ plastic cups, it’s unclear whether and when they will be phased out from the more than 16,000 locations in the U.S. that are still offering them. Last April, the company said it had redesigned its single-use plastic cups to use up to 20% less plastic — a move that would allegedly “keep more than 13.5 million pounds of plastic from landfills each year.”

According to Dell, Starbucks’ move away from plastic cups is a “crack in the wall” of the campaign to promote polypropylene recycling — particularly from the Recycling Partnership, an industry-backed nonprofit that in 2020 launched an initiative called the Polypropylene Recycling Coalition to “ensure the long-term viability of polypropylene plastic.” As of December, the Recycling Partnership said it had distributed $22 million in grants to recycling facilities to improve the collection and sorting of polypropylene. The organization’s chief policy officer, Kate Davenport, told Grist this money has helped bump up the recycling rate for polypropylene packaging. She said polypropylene recycling has “needed a lot of investment,” although her organization also sees a need to reduce plastic production overall.

Starbucks is a founding partner of one of the Polypropylene Recycling Coalition’s steering committee members, the NextGen Consortium, and has donated millions of dollars to this organization to “explore the circularity” of polypropylene, among other objectives. The Starbucks spokesperson said the company would continue to fund these and similar efforts.

Starbucks declined to say whether it would eliminate additional forms of single-use plastic, like snack boxes and prepackaged beverages, or comment on whether the company would expand compostable cups nationwide.

Environmental advocates say Starbucks should eliminate nonrecyclable single-use plastic across the country, although Dell acknowledged that doing so could take some time due to supply chain delays and the vast number of stores — Starbucks is the second-largest restaurant chain in the world, after all. She called on the company to be more transparent about its plans, and to change in-store recycling bin labels to make it clear that only cans or plastic bottles — which are recycled at much higher rates than polypropylene cups — are accepted.

Ramsden said that, while compostable cups are a “step in the right direction,” Starbucks should place its focus on reusable containers whenever possible. “We need to move away from the single-use mindset, whether it’s plastic or aluminum or bioplastic containers, and move toward systems of refill and reuse.”

Proposition 36, which passed in November 2024, promised California voters a new era of “mass treatment” for people struggling with addiction and a crackdown on repeat petty thieves amid a spike in retail theft.

The debate around the measure, called “The Homelessness, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act,” was fueled in part by a series of videotaped smash-and-grab robberies splashed across local TV news and images of unhoused residents shooting up drugs in the streets.

Voters signaled they wanted a crackdown and they approved Prop. 36 with nearly 70% casting ballots in favor of it.

A little more than a year later, the measure is getting mixed reviews.

Supporters say it's been effective in holding repeat offenders accountable. Critics say it's been a return to mass incarceration without the promised treatment for people with substance abuse.

How Prop. 36 works

Prop. 36 stiffened penalties for repeat theft and drug offenders.

Here’s how the measure works: If you have been convicted of two misdemeanor thefts of $950 or less, prosecutors have the option of charging your third petty theft as a felony, which carries up to a three-year prison term.

Before Prop. 36, petty theft was a misdemeanor, regardless of how many times you did it.

When it comes to drug offenses under Prop 36, if you have been convicted of two possessions of a small amount of hard drugs (fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine), prosecutors have the option of charging your third possession as a felony. But you don’t have to go to prison if you agree to go into drug treatment.

In 2025, California prosecutors filed more than 19,000 Prop. 36 felony drug cases and more than 15,500 felony theft cases, according to a study by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice released in March. Most people were released on bail pending the outcome of their case.

Nearly 900 Californians have been sent to state prison under Prop. 36, since it went into effect in December 2024. County jail populations have grown by nearly 3,000 since the measure passed, driven by a surge in felony bookings of people who have not yet been sentenced.

In Los Angeles County alone, there are about 1,150 individuals in jail because of Prop. 36 — about a 9% increase in the jail population, according to county Public Defender Ricardo Garcia. The surge in defendants is adding caseloads to his already overworked attorneys, he said.

The same is happening across the state.

“This is really compounding the workload crisis,” said Kate Chatfield, executive director of the California Public Defenders Association.

The data represents a reversal of yearslong declines in incarceration, and they are occurring amid all-time lows in California’s crime rate.

“It really is a return to mass incarceration,” Chatfield argued.

Black people overrepresented

Black people are dramatically overrepresented in Prop. 36 charges, according to the study. In Contra Costa County, for example, Black residents account for more than half of all Proposition 36 theft charges, despite making up less than one-tenth of the population.

Prosecutors say the law has been effective.

“It’s been a valuable tool to go after chronic and repeat thieves,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said.

Hochman said his office brought more than 3,300 Prop. 36 felony cases against people charged with their third petty theft in 2025.

He said his office brought over 1,900 felony cases against people charged with their third possession of hard drugs.

He said he couldn’t immediately provide numbers on how many of the drug defendants opted for rehabilitation over prison.

Statewide, fewer than 1 in 5 people arrested on Prop. 36 drug charges have been ordered to treatment, and fewer than 1 in 100 have completed a program, according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice study.

Lack of treatment beds

One reason for the low treatment numbers is a scarcity of treatment beds throughout the state.

“There just isn’t enough treatment to meet the need,” said the center’s Maureen Washburn. “People aren’t getting connected to treatment. They aren’t succeeding in treatment programs once they’re in them.”

Treatment, a major promise of Prop. 36, has been an “abject failure,” she said.

Hochman agreed treatment is lacking.

“We do not have anywhere close to enough drug treatment and mental illness beds in a county of 10 million people,” he said.

The district attorney argued the state needs to provide more funding for treatment beds.

“Sacramento has not funded at any meaningful level,” he said.

In a March letter to the chair of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, the co-author of Prop. 36 — Senator Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) — said at least $400 million dollars in new funding is needed for treatment facilities.

“I think spending taxpayer dollars on drug treatment — both in the short term and in the long term — is a smart way to address public safety issues,” Umberg told LAist.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has requested in his budget $100 million dollars for treatment over three years.

But Chatfield said people facing Prop. 36 charges shouldn't be locked up in the first place. Drug offenses should be handled as a public health issue, she argued.

“Even the low level misdemeanors for theft are economic crimes,” she said. “These are crimes of poverty.”

Unequal application of Prop. 36

In addition to a paucity of treatment beds, the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice study found charging rates vary dramatically by county. Orange County alone accounted for nearly 20% of Prop. 36 drug charges and 40% of theft convictions in 2025 despite representing just 8% of the state’s population.

“This inconsistency across counties exacerbates California’s longstanding problem of providing differing ”justice by geography,” the report stated.

Empirical evidence of the effect of Prop. 36 on the crime rate is lacking. But Umberg said he believes it has reduced retail theft.

“I have been told by a huge number of folks in law enforcement and also in the business community — particularly in the retail community — that it has had an effect on retail theft,” Umberg said.

Hochman said it's too early to tell if people are being deterred by Proposition 36.

“We’re waiting on statistics that we’ll probably get sometime this year to see if the deterrent aspect is also working — that we actually have fewer people going ahead and committing these crimes,” Hochman said.

But crime was on the way down before Proposition 36 passed. Violent crime fell 6% and property crime dropped 8.4% in California in 2024 — the year Prop. 36 passed.

Chatfield of the California Public Defenders Association maintains voters were “sold a bill of goods” on the measure.

“They were told this was about homelessness. They were told this was about treatment. And it absolutely was not," she said. "It was about increasing incarceration.”

Using a tablet or TV to calm a fussy child might work in the short-term, but a new study out of UC Irvine finds it could backfire later.

The study, published in Developmental Psychology, found that higher device use was linked to more behavior issues among toddlers, like biting or hitting or kicking — as well as more parental stress.

The study followed more than 200 families in Orange County and Washington, D.C., over time, from when a child was 9 months old to 2-and-a-half years old.

“Emotion regulation skills — like their own ability to calm and distract themselves — [they] might be being displaced by devices instead,” said Stephanie Reich, professor of education at UC Irvine. “And if [kids] don't have that skill, they might act out more, have more behavior problems.”

More behavioral problems in turn can make parenting more stressful, which means it’ll make it more likely that kids get devices again, creating a cycle parents can get stuck in, Reich said.

The study also found that mothers experienced more stress later when using devices to distract their children, but that wasn’t the experience for fathers. While higher device use was linked to more behavior problems, fathers did not feel the level of stress as much as mothers.

When mothers were stressed, they were more likely to use devices, Reich said. She couldn’t definitively explain why there was a difference between parents, but said that in general, parenting work falls more to mothers.

“They just might be more overwhelmed, or taking on more than fathers when it comes to day-to-day parenting,” she said.

The study notes the type of parent-child interactions that might be replaced by devices, including picking them up, holding and rocking them, and talking to them calmly and reminding them to breathe.

“All of these types of interactions, from physical touch to language use to breathing tips for calming, offer the developing child opportunities to cultivate their self-regulatory skills,” the authors wrote.

A federal judge said she’ll need more time to decide whether to grant a temporary court order to give immigrants detained at Adelanto ICE Processing Center immediate relief.

Immigrants rights groups and a private firm filed a lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security in January. They allege that the approximately 2,000 people currently held at the Adelanto complex are subject to inhumane treatment.

On top of squalid conditions, plaintiffs say detainees are fed cold, unsanitary food and expected to drink dirty water. They also allege detainees must often wait several months to see a doctor, if they ever do.

“The conditions in which these non-citizens are being held in the Adelanto detention facility, as alleged in the petition, are certainly concerning,” said Judge Sunshine Sykes at a hearing Tuesday for the Central District of California. “I think that each of us would never want to be in that position.”

Still, Sykes said she was tentatively inclined to “deny the motion [for a preliminary injunction] without prejudice or to allow plaintiffs to withdraw the motion and refile it,” which would give the immigrants rights groups a chance to address her concerns. She then gave the attorneys the opportunity to respond and, potentially, convince her otherwise.

What’s happening at Adelanto?

Adelanto is about 90 miles away from downtown Los Angeles. According to the lawsuit, the detention center does not accommodate detainees with special needs. Detainees with mobility issues, for instance, are assigned top bunks. And in a sworn declaration, one detainee described being put in handcuffs and ankle chains when she is taken to court appointments, even though she uses a cane.

Plaintiffs also say solitary confinement is used to retaliate against detainees who speak out against these conditions and to isolate those who are experiencing mental health crises. An LAist analysis of the most recent ICE data found that as of January, Adelanto is among the top 10 facilities that put immigrant detainees in solitary confinement across the country.

The detention center is run by The GEO Group Inc., one of the largest private prison operators in the United States.

The federal government has declined LAist's request for interviews and comments, and The GEO Group has not responded to those requests.

The arguments for and against an injunction

In the hearing, Judge Sykes raised concerns that The GEO Group and the Adelanto warden are not named in the lawsuit. She also questioned how the court could enforce an order for immediate relief and wondered if there might be a more “efficient” way for the plaintiffs to proceed.

The federal government has asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit altogether. Pushkal Mishra, representing ICE and DHS, said “between the government and the alleged injury are the independent, discretionary, uncertain and speculative day-to-day activities of a third party.” The GEO Group and its employees, he argued, “are the proper defendants in the case, not [the] government.”

The advocates' lawsuit underscores that companies like The GEO Group are subject to inspection by the federal government. Recently, ICE gave the Adelanto ICE Processing Center a “good” rating. Since September 2025, at least four people have died in detention at Adelanto, the most recent March 25.

At the hearing, Vanessa Young Viniegra, a fellow at Public Counsel, refuted the federal government’s argument that ICE and DHS should not be named defendants in the case.

“The Supreme Court has been clear that the government has a constitutional duty to care for the people in its custody and the people that it chooses to detain,” she said, “regardless of whether it employs a private company.”

Judge Sykes interjected: “I don't think I'm saying that the government is not a proper defendant. I'm saying that The GEO Group [and] the warden of Adelanto may need to be joined or brought in as defendants as well.”

Young Viniegra noted that the motion for the emergency court order provides the government “some leeway” in terms of how it obligates Adelanto to provide adequate care for detainees.

“We're not asking the court to order, you know, a specific number of staff,” she said. “It's up to the government to comply with its constitutional obligations and exactly how it does that and its relationship with GEO is for it to decide.”

What's next?

Sykes said she’ll need more time to make a decision. In addition to the preliminary injunction, she is also navigating the federal government’s motion to dismiss the case and a motion by the plaintiffs to make this a class action lawsuit, meaning the court’s outcome would apply to all Adelanto detainees.

Learn more about Adelanto

• Is Adelanto's ICE detention facility a ‘concentration camp’? And does it matter?
• Adelanto ICE facility's use of solitary confinement is among 10 highest in US, data shows
• These Angelenos journeyed to Adelanto to protest conditions at immigrant detention centers

When it was first built nearly 100 years ago, the Jardinette Apartments building in Hollywood made international headlines for its radical design. At the time, Los Angeles had never seen anything quite like architect Richard Neutra’s iconoclastic vision of what apartment living could look like.

But by the end of the century, the Jardinette had become dilapidated, its historic significance hidden behind years of neglect.

Now, this pioneering piece of L.A. architecture is coming back to life.

Developer Cameron Hassid bought the nationally registered building in 2020 after previous owners tried but failed to restore it. With the renovation now nearing completion, the Jardinette’s original concept once again is coming into clear view.

“It was a big, heavy lift,” Hassid said, describing the project as the most complicated in his career. “There are so many apartment buildings in L.A. But none of them will have the story or any of the significance that this does.”

First steps for a now-famous architect

In the 1920s, Neutra was a young Austrian architect who had recently moved to the United States to work with Frank Lloyd Wright and fellow Austrian émigré Rudolph Schindler.

Historians cite the style he would go on to develop — with its flat roofs, expansive windows, deep overhangs and blending of the indoors and outdoors — as defining the language of mid-century California modernism.

Neutra's Palm Springs Kaufmann Desert House from 1946 and his Silver Lake VDL Research House II from 1965 became iconic homes of the period.

Richard Neutra's family lived in the VDL Research House II, located in Silver Lake and designed by Neutra with his son, Dion.

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Michael Locke via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr

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But the Jardinette, built in 1928, was Neutra’s first major commission in L.A., coming just a few years after his arrival in the United States.

Architecture historians say Neutra’s goal was to strip down the Jardinette’s design, maximizing light and fresh air in the building’s 43 modestly sized apartments, all in keeping with the burgeoning International Style.

Long ribbon windows are the most striking feature in an otherwise unadorned facade. Windows join at corners and stretch across nearly entire walls, connecting living rooms and kitchens. Panes in the walls of interior closets bring “borrowed light” into shadowy interiors.

Neutra outfitted many of the apartments with balconies that cantilever off reinforced concrete. The balconies were ideal for outdoor plants — hence the name Jardinette, or Little Garden.

The restoration of the Jardinette Apartments is nearly complete.

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Barbara Lamprecht, an architectural historian who consulted on the preservation of the Jardinette, said Neutra’s approach would have seemed utterly alien amid the 1920s development boom in L.A.

“All these other revival styles were happening: Tudor Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival,” said Lamprecht, the author of Neutra: Complete Works from the publisher Taschen. “This was not a milieu that encouraged, fostered or remotely understood the tenets of early modernism.”

Once-lauded edifice falls on hard times

The Jardinette helped secure Neutra’s fame far beyond the confines of Southern California. His work on the Jardinette was included in a landmark 1932 architecture exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

But by the 1990s, the Jardinette had all but lost its visionary purity. It was painted pink and green. The previously uniform steel windows were mismatched, using cheap materials. The walls were graffitied.

By the late 20th century, the Jardinette had fallen into disrepair.

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“It was sad,” said Corey Miller with June Street Architecture, who worked on the renovation.

“It's just what happens when buildings get neglected,” he said. “It's important to look back on these ideas and not lose them and try to maintain them and not cover them up. Now, hopefully for another 100 years, more generations of people can experience the design the way it was originally intended.”

Working with the limits of a century-old building

The team behind the Jardinette’s renewal said the building was not easy to renovate. It was originally built without a cooling system. Its electrical system couldn’t meet modern energy needs. It didn’t have stand-up showers.

Installing those modern amenities while preserving Neutra’s original design proved challenging at times, said Anant Topiwala with June Street Architecture.

The team preserved whatever original materials they could, Topiwala said, but they needed to order custom tiles, windows and other parts in order to match historic photographs and documents.

A historic photograph shows the Jardinette in its original state.

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“We were like archeologists, in a way,” he said. “There was a lot of peeling back. What do we think the paint color was? What do we think that wood detail was?

“Neutra didn't like angles. We needed to make sure, for example, the casing around the doors didn't meet at a mitered corner. There's just so many interesting things.”

Pulling permits for a protected landmark

The Jardinette has multiple historic designations. It’s in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. And it’s protected as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. Those classifications limit what kinds of changes are allowed in a renovation. Getting all the necessary permits was a job in itself, one handled by Michael Norberg with Cali Planners.

“Everything you can think of that could come up did come up on this building,” Norberg said. “But I think the bones have been reinforced. The historic aspect has been retained. The entire nature and history and spirit of this building is still here.

“And I love the fact that the city was willing to work with us on maintaining that,” he said.

How the past informs future plans

Hassid said the renovation should be completed by this summer. He added that he’s not yet sure what the building’s future will be, but he won’t sell it to a typical real estate investor. He recently put it on the market with Neema Ahadian of Marcus & Millichap.

“We've sold some really beautiful buildings, but nothing that has the history that you can find here,” Ahadian said. The buyer will need to be someone who understands the value of preserving a piece of architectural history, he said.

“This building's been through a few ownerships that have not necessarily had the same vision,” Ahadian said.

Two windows join at a right angle and a door opens to a balcony in one corner of a Jardinette apartment.

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When he first took on the project, Hassid said, colleagues told him he was nuts. But he said ultimately the effort was worth it to preserve an L.A. architectural gem.

“I hope we made Richard Neutra proud, bringing his building back to life,” he said.

What does real luxury look like? 

Neutra built the Jardinette at a time when movie studios were growing. The Paramount studio lot is just a few blocks away.

Barbara Lamprecht, an architectural historian with expertise in Neutra's work, consulted on the preservation of the Jardinette.

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Lamprecht, the Neutra historian, said she’s looking forward to seeing how people occupy the apartments. She said Neutra designed the Jardinette to bring a new kind of luxury to occupants who might have included up-and-coming actors or below-the-line production workers.

“The luxuries in life are access to sunlight, to views,” Lamprecht said. “This was the raison d'être for this entire building: to provide graceful, expansive lives to people who weren’t in single-family dwellings in the Hollywood Hills.”

Whoever the next tenants will be, Lamprecht said, “I feel like, for the first time, this building is not invisible any longer.”