I buy at least one Starbucks coffee beverage every day as part of my commute to work. My morning desk feels incomplete without a triple grande one pump no whip skim mocha. Yes, I'm a bit of an addict. Yes, I can handle it. :-) Yes, go ahead and lampoon me in a Saturday Night Live skit.
But I have some concerns about this company's "green cred," and want them to do better. Although I don't mean to single them out (there are companies that are wretchedly evil compared with Starbucks), and although I probably won't stop visiting them daily (sometimes twice daily if my energy is lagging), I have noticed some wasteful patterns that I want to discuss here.
Overall, I love the quality of their coffee -- they really know their beans and roast them to perfection -- if you check out my list below, you may come to realize there are things we can all do better to reduce, re-use and recycle.
Join me for a trippio soy caramel macchiato in a personal cup below the fold.
1) I TRIED TO REDUCE MY PAPER FOOTPRINT... but baristas waste cups anyway.
I bought a couple of their excellent re-usable insulated mugs. (I wonder what country they're made in, and whether they contain lead, but that's another diary.) The mugs keeps the coffee super hot for hours, which is perfect. I bought the mugs so that I could get my coffee without using paper cups plus cardboard gripper sleeve thingies.
But more than half of the baristas I've visited at various stores throughout the east coast invariably mark up a paper cup with instructions for another barista. Sometimes they even use another cup to make the drink, for example, to steam the milk in.
When I see this happening, I try to lean forward and quickly say, with humor and good nature, "Oh actually can you do that without wasting a cup, I'm trying to save paper." A smile can be most disarming, and being mostly great people at the stores, I've never had anyone tell me "no" or give me a hard time. I appreciate that. But just as often, my paper-saving intention amounts to nought.
One innovative store had mini post-its with preprinted Starbucks codes for marking personal cups. That's a step in the right direction -- being in the business of managing workflow I can see how this solves the problem of assembly line while not wasting an entire cup. But it's still paper waste.
2) FOOD GETS THROWN AWAY EVERY DAY
I've been told that Starbucks stores change their food displays a few times a day, with breakfast sandwiches in the morning getting changed out with cakes and other confections later in the day. This results in a midday and closing trip to the trash with unsold food. What puzzles me is that I've read in the local paper (a major metropolitan daily) that food banks are having problems meeting demand.
Why doesn't Starbucks collect the perfectly good sandwiches and pastries and donate them? I've called the Starbucks 800 number, and a very receptive and professional phone person said they would have to look into that... that was a few weeks ago....
Just yesterday I was visiting one of my local stores for an afternoon pick-me-up of a short dark roast (what's a short? It's an unadvertised size smaller than a tall!!!! Try it!) where I saw a manager dragging a garbage can out from the back room, and it was filled with still-wrapped breakfast sandwiches from that morning. There's a homeless shelter only 4 blocks from this store. Maybe I should volunteer to bring them over myself?
3) WATER WATER EVERYWHERE....
You know those bar sinks for rinsing spoons etc.? On a number of occasions I've noticed the faucets running, unattended. A lot of water gets wasted that way. Do I have to explain why wasting water -- anywhere on earth -- is not a good idea?
4) WOULD YOU LIKE PLASTIC WITH YOUR FRAPPUCINO? Please give us a way to recycle....
All of the tempting summer drinks like frappucinos, topped with delicious whip cream and drizzled with caramel, are served in plastic cups. Lots of plastic. Plastic covers are manufactured with domes to make room for mountains of whipped cream. I'm sure there's a good reason -- perhaps marketing research shows that cold drinks are best served in clear cups, or whatever. But my god, there is so much plastic in the trash cans, I'm pretty amazed that there's no recycling bin.
What's up with that? So many consumers are motivated to recycle. Before I bought my re-usable mugs, I would even bring the plastic coffee covers home to recycle, and the cardboard sleeves got mixed in with my miscellaneous paper. And you know what? I love reading the New York Times at Starbucks, and there's noplace to recycle paper either.
In summary, whether you get your coffee from Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks, I recommend finding ways to reduce, re-use and recycle. By extension, any fast food joint can do better along the same lines.
One post-script: I welcome any comments below about their fair trade practices, if any... this is an area I'm trying to educate myself about.
Peace and out.
Coffee, the finest organic suspension ever devised. ~Star Trek: Voyager