Starbucks Sustainability
By:Kiley Lang
Products
- Starbucks produces coffee beverages and pastries.
Sustainability Goals
- The sustainability goals for Starbucks include addressing climate change by minimizing their environmental footprint and creating a plethora of environmentally beneficial change.
Sustainability Efforts
a) This company has changed by having a more positive outlook on the environment and fixing their past environmental problems. To fix their complications, Starbucks has been working hard to reduce their environmental footprint from a very large one to a footprint on a smaller scale.
b) Their efforts on benefiting the environment are as listed: building more energy efficient stores, conserving water, using renewable energy instead of nonrenewable resources, and thinking of new solutions for recycling, for instance, promoting their reusable cups. An example of conserving water is that the stores are putting in water filtration systems in existing stores. Furthermore, as an alternative to using nonrenewable resources, many Starbucks businesses are using wind energy to power their stores.
By the Numbers
- In 2008 Starbucks set a goal to reduce their water use in stores by 25% by 2015.
- Most stores have contributed to the process of water conservation by saving an average of 25,000 more gallons of water per year.
- Starbucks set an energy conservation goal of 25% in 2008.
- Currently, Starbucks is on track to purchase renewable energy equal to 100% of the energy used in the U.S. and Canadian stores.
- In 2014 Starbucks added recycling to more than 760 stores.
Environmental Concerns
- One of Starbuck's environmental concerns is the size of their environmental footprint. They believe that their footprint is too large and they are striving to make that shrink. A solution they have for this is to put water filtration systems into place.
- Starbucks is concerned with the affect of climate change on farmers. Since their coffee farmers are working everyday through these tough conditions, they realize that this is a major problem. Climate change alters rainfall and harvest patterns. In turn, this is hurting their communities in a large-scale way. To solve this problem, Starbucks is purchasing renewable energy sources and including climate-smart agricultural practices.
- They are also concerned that a tremendous amount of water is being produced globally. A solution they have to this problem is that Starbucks is improving package design, offering reusable cups, and expanding their recycling programs.
Cool Facts
- Printed on all of the recyclable cups' sleeves, it states "Help us help the planet."
- Americans consumed about 23 billion paper coffee cups in 2010.
- In 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency named Starbucks as one of the top 25 Green Power Partners.