From the category archives:

Starbucks doing good things / (Red)

Free brewed coffee at Starbucks on April 15th (Coming to your local Starbucks this Thursday)!

by Melody on April 12, 2010

{ 54 comments }

This year April 15, 2010 is not just tax day. It’s “free brewed coffee day” at Starbucks. But there is a catch to this: The customer has to be “green.”  Bring in your own personal tumbler and receive a free brewed coffee in it on April 15, 2010.  Think of it as an early celebration of Earth Day.

This is THE perfect chance to remind my readers that being green is truly a partnership between the customer and the business. The responsibility to take care of the environment is in the hands of both customer and corporation.  I routinely hear complaints about the lack of recycling in a Starbucks store, but the fact of the matter is that it is far more “green” and “earth friendly” to bring in your own cup than to use a paper cup and then toss that paper cup into a recycle bin.

The amount of energy required to sort recyclables, transport them to a recycle station, convert and transform it into something new, and then re-distribute that new product into the chain of commerce far exceeds the little bit of water required to rinse a personal cup.

Make it a habit to take a personal cup with you to Starbucks. Whether you throw it in a backpack, keep it in your car, toss it in your purse, or carry it around in your briefcase, a personal tumbler IS the earth-responsible thing to do on the part of the customer, and there is no substitution for it (other than staying in the store and asking for your beverage in for-here ware).

According to the 2008 Shared Planet report, less than 2 percent of all Starbucks customers are using their own personal cup. This has got to change. That change can only happen when we, as customers, make that personal decision to change our own Starbucks habits. I know it’s cool and hip to have a white cup, with a Siren, and boxes, but taking care of the earth is even cooler.  Starbucks partners are an important part of this too. I’ve heard it said (not sure if this is an exact statistic) that Starbucks partners use about 4 million paper cups every year. Starbucks, in total, uses over 3 billion paper cups every year.

This is also a great opportunity to remind folks of my previous blog entry on recycling at Starbucks:

Commentary: Recyclable Cups and Starbucks

Enjoy your free coffee on the 15th!

PS: Notice the reusable coffee tumbler in the image associated with this blog entry. Those who know me, know that I am totally enamored with the Starbucks coffee stamps of the 1990s and the era when the coffee stamp was constantly in use for custom blends, half-pound coffee sales, and sampling coffee.  The tumbler featured shows off the first generation of coffee stamps before they were through the late 1990s revision. That Sumatra tiger is still what I think of in my head when I think of Sumatra. It is still my visual image for Sumatra.

So who else will be having a free cup of coffee this Thursday? :-)

[[Caution: This blog entry applies to the United States. I know I have readers world-wide, but I'm not sure if other Starbucks other than the U.S. have similar promotions going on. Sorry.]]

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Product (Red) Cold Starbucks To Go Tumbler – An Idea

by Melody on March 21, 2010

{ 21 comments }

We are global citizens.  We have an awesome responsibility especially as the addicted coffee drinkers that we are:  Coffee touches numerous impoverished growing regions, and we in a first world country, have a social obligation to be not just consumers, but rather responsible collaborators.  The word “collaborate” comes from the Latin, meaning, ‘labor together’.  What we can do is support and anchor partnerships with organizations like (Red).

This short blog post is inspired by a MyStarbucksIdea idea thread about the cold re-usable to-go tumblers.  Why not partner this product with (Red)?  The most recent launch of the cold to-go cups was the November 2009 holiday version with a red and white striped straw, which tumblers sold well.

So imagine a re-usable cold cup with a red straw, and perhaps a 3 pack of spare straws, and the green Siren with the Red distinctive parenthesis around it.  Just as with other (Red) partnerships, a portion of the sales could go to (Red) which fights HIV in Africa.  This is a great opportunity for an easy way to create a popular product partnership with (Red). It’s a simple design idea, and already a popular item!

I’m asking my readers to please, take a minute, go to MSI, and vote up the (Red) Cold Cup thread idea. Here’s the link to follow one more time:

This blog entry gives me a chance to touch upon two previous blog posts that closely tie into the theme of this one:

  1. (Red) The Year In Review – An October 2009 blog entry which summarizes the many product partnerships between Starbucks and (Red).
  2. Recyclable Cups at Starbucks – This is an important older StarbucksMelody.com blog post about personal cup use at Starbucks. The bottom line is that it is too little, and it needs improvement.

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Starbucks Shared Planet: An introductory lesson about ethical coffee sourcing

by Melody on January 2, 2010

{ 17 comments }

Welcome to your introduction to Starbucks C.A.F.E. practices and Shared Planet; On Mystarbucksidea.com, the site is intermittently flooded with people who yell, “Starbucks needs to sell more fair trade coffee”.  This blog post is in response to those cries for ethically sourced coffee.  Let’s talk about coffee sourcing – this blog post is your very basic introductory blog about responsible coffee sourcing.  I might later write a more detailed discussion about C.A.F.E. practices.

It is essential to realize that there is more than one way to ethically source coffee.  “Fair Trade” is a label.  That bears repeating.  It is just a label.  Coffee with other labels related to their sourcing are equally responsibly sourced.  Just because you don’t see a “fair trade” label doesn’t mean that it’s not sourced with the utmost concern for farmer and environment.  Starbucks has adopted  the “Shared Planet” label as the label you can trust for responsible coffee.

First off, there is so much information that it is almost difficult to figure out how to compile it for an introductory ethical bean sourcing post.  Perhaps it would be wise to remind my readers that the lingo “Shared Planet” is really a new way of Starbucks describing what they already had been doing for over a decade – responsibly sourcing coffee.  Starbucks has always sought to pay more than the market price of coffee, and ensure that coffee beans were sourced ethically and preserve the biosphere of the farm region, but a turning point in how Starbucks accomplishes this came in 1998.

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Background: Organic Shade Grown Mexico Coffee, 1998

In 1998, Starbucks entered into a partnership with Conservation International, a non-profit organization, to develop a plan to responsibly source coffee from the Chiapas region of Mexico.  The goal of the partnership was to preserve the healthy shade canopy of the region’s farms, and create sustainable farming practices for the region’s farmers.  It was a three-year pilot program out of which Starbucks launched Organic Shade Grown Mexico coffee, and the participating farmers saw their income rise, received technical assistance from Conservation International field staff, and developed on-going trade relationship with Starbucks.  You can read more about the history of Organic Shade Grown Mexico on the Conservation International site, here.

This initial three-year pilot program grew into a long, on-going relationship with Starbucks that continues today.  In 2008, Starbucks agreed to another 5-year partnership period with Conservation International.

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C.A.F.E. practices – The next phase for Starbucks


From the experiences of working with Conservation International, Starbucks began to formalize and adopt its policies for coffee sourcing.  In 2003, again with the cooperation of Conservation International, Starbucks launched its first formalized and third-party verified coffee bean sourcing standards, known as C.A.F.E. practices.  It is important to note that Starbucks had always believed in ethically sourcing coffee, but previously did not have a rigid program and yard stick to measure how well they were living up to the goals for responsibly sourcing coffee.

C.A.F.E. practices stands for Coffee And Farmer Equity Practices.  Under C.A.F.E. practices, each participating farm is audited by third-party verifiers (meaning these are not Starbucks employees, but rather disinterested third parties) for compliance with a long list of standards. The ‘standards’ look at everything from compliance with local wage law to total hours worked by farm workers, to access to health care and education, to maintenance of buffer zones of water bodies on the farm.  The ‘standards’ scoring sheet is far too lengthy to reiterate here in full, but suffice it to say, each farm is scored on a broad array of topics relating to labor, environmental, and social responsibility practices.  Some topics on the ‘score card‘ are considered zero-tolerance, and if the farmer fails in one of these areas, no matter how glowing his performance otherwise, the farm cannot be certified as a C.A.F.E. practices farmer.

C.A.F.E. practices continues today, and is still the program by which coffee farms must live up to to a certain standard to bear the “Shared Planet” symbol on the coffee packaging.  Starbucks incentivizes the farmers to constantly improve their C.A.F.E. practices scores with monetary incentives.  The general structure of the incentive is that with higher scores, the farmer will be paid more for his green coffee beans.

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What is Shared Planet?

Shared Planet is what Starbucks calls its program for comprehensive analysis and report for all of its “green” activities.  For example, Shared Planet reports on everything from the number of customers using a personal cup, to the percentage of stores which are LEED Certified, to donation and giving that Starbucks is involved in.  The coffee sourcing guidelines under C.A.F.E. practices are one piece of a larger plan as Starbucks strives to be a company with a social conscious.  For example, I heavily reference the Shared Planet report on my prior blog entry on the Starbucks personal cup and recycling:

In the Starbucks blogs on mystarbucksidea.com, in October 2008, Starbucks produced a good overview of the kinds of topics Shared Planet touches on and you can read that here:

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Why doesn’t Starbucks buy all Fair Trade coffee?

Many people may hear about C.A.F.E. practices but still wonder, ‘why doesn’t Starbucks just buy all Fair Trade coffee?’  Fair Trade is a label, and farmers have to go through certification, and pay a Fair Trade association fee to be part of the Fair Trade.  Even the most responsible farmer who takes care of his workers and farm will never become Fair Trade certified if he or she decides that for whatever reason, not to pay the Fair Trade association fee.  The percentage of farmers who are Fair Trade certified is small, and there are not enough beans from Fair Trade farms to supply all of Starbucks needs.

It’s important to know that how the coffee beans are sourced doesn’t necessarily correlate to the quality of the coffee bean.  A responsible farmer using  C.A.F.E. practices, organic practices, Fair Trade certified may still produce inferior beans that Starbucks rejects as too low of quality.  The beans could have insect damage, mill damage, or for any number of reasons, not be of an adequate quality for Starbucks coffee buyers.

Starbucks produced a short essay on “Why Isn’t All Your Coffee Fair Trade Certified?” and it is definitely worth reading:

In late 2008, Starbucks announced that they would nearly double their purchasing of Fair Trade coffee for 2009, increasing to nearly 40 million pounds of Fair Trade certified coffee.  Starbucks is the single largest purchaser of Fair Trade coffee.  You can read more about their commitment to expanding Fair Trade coffee buying here:

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Conclusion

That wraps up a very basic introduction to a couple of different ideas related to coffee sourcing with responsible means.  In conclusion: (1) There is more than one way to responsibly source coffee – it doesn’t have to have a particular kind of a label (2) The sourcing guidelines don’t necessarily tell you about bean quality and (3) Starbucks does support Fair Trade, but there is not enough Fair Trade beans to supply all their needs.  Any number of these topics might be expanded later for more detailed blog posts.  I also recommend that you read the prior blog entry on Sumatra sourcing, which has some unique aspects to it:

The magic of Aged Sumatra and Sumatra

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Commentary: Recyclable Cups & Starbucks

by Melody on November 14, 2009

{ 57 comments }

Personal cups/tumblers

Personal cups/tumblers

Bring in Your Own Tumbler:

This blog is about encouraging Starbucks customers to use a personal tumbler or ask for their beverage in for-here ware.

Yes, of course I believe that recycling paper cups is a good idea, but there is much more to the story than simply the paper cup itself. The story is really about consumer habit and resistance to any modus operandi a little less convenient to them.  This has to change. There is work to be done here, and we can only create consumer change if we start the conversation on why it  has to change.

By way of background, on mystarbucksidea.com one can easily find that the site is flooded with threads like, “Recyclable Cups!“.  Here are a few examples:

(Some of the above mystarbucksidea.com are closed or merged threads).

I participate heavily on mystarbucksidea.com and often want to write long responses to these kinds of threads, but that site is not conducive to long posts.  These many repetitive threads shouting at Starbucks to please recycle paper cups are the inspiration for this blog post.

*****A non-Starbucks you-tube video as a starting point for discussion*****

First off, there is a you tube video here taking a small swipe at Starbucks for not doing more to encourage recycling and using personal tumblers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlfszjapNb8

^ It’s worth watching, whether you’re a Starbucks fan or not.  I can’t vouch for the factual accuracy of all the data that you-tube video but it  is loaded with eye-popping statistics:

“North America uses 60% of the world’s paper cups. 130 billion of them per year” and “those cups require about 50 million trees” and another eye-opener, “Starbucks goes through nearly 2.3 billion cups annually”

The above you-tube video is a little dated. For example it states that there are NO recycle bins at Starbucks.  As I write this in November 2009, that no longer is a completely true statement.  Increasingly, as stores get remodeled, and new LEED Certified stores open, we see recycle bins in here and there.

List of Starbucks with recycle bins:

Washington State:

Baristas have written to me to tell about their stores recycle efforts, and so I’ve heard that these stores here have recycling in them also:

Missouri

New Jersey

South Carolina

As I hear about company-operated Starbucks stores with recycle bins included in them, I’d be glad to add them to this list. PLEASE email me if you know of a company-operated Starbucks with recycle bins. Use the “Contact” form associated with this website or email me at sbux206@starbucksmelody.com.

According to the Fiscal 2008 Annual Report, as of September 28, 2008, Starbucks operated 9,217 company operated stores.  Think about how many paper cups could be saved if customers brought in their own tumbler:

If 100 people a day brought in their own personal tumbler, annually Starbucks would use about 921,700 fewer paper cups each year! That’s a lot of paper cups.  That’s almost a million cups!

*****How many customers are using a personal cup at Starbucks?*****

When baristas ring a transaction as including a personal cup discount, that data gets collected and mined and used to supply information in the Annual Shared Planet report.  There is no doubt, there is more personal cup usage than the appalling low number in the Shared Planet report due to forgotten cup discounts.  When you bring in your own cup, Starbucks gives you ten-cents off your drink purchase.

When a cup discount is forgotten, I think the barista should re-ring the transaction to include the cup discount.  It is the only way to make a difference and make your mark as a person using your own tumbler. Unfortunately, in my own experience, it is rare for a barista to re-ring the transaction. I cringe, but most commonly I see baristas reach into the tip jar and pull out a dime.  And I’m left thinking, “it’s not about your dime. I didn’t mean to tip a dime less. I want to make a difference with Starbucks.”  I’ve stopped arguing with baristas though.  Most seem to think I actually want a dime, and I get some really odd looks if I say things like, “I’m trying to make a difference with Starbucks”.  At a fundamental level though, I think most customers would say that making a difference to the planet is the reason why they use their own tumbler, and it’s not about the dime.

So this discussion begs the all important question, ‘what percentage of customers are using a personal cup?’.  The answer is 1.3 percent. This is appallingly low.  Less than 2 out of 100 customers walk in with a personal tumbler in their hands.  Even more surprising, according to Starbucks, this number is a fairly constant and stable number over a pattern of several years.

This is shocking! Customers, please bring in your own cup!! If you want to claim environmental friendliness, then you’ll make it a habit to have a cup in your car, in backpack, in your briefcase, it needs to be part of your routine.  What if Starbucks used a million fewer paper cups each year?  How about five million?  All I know is that with personal cup usage at an appalling low rate, there is huge room to save trees, landfills, and energy … All by YOU making a commitment not to use a paper cup.

Here is what Starbucks has to say about personal cup use (taken from their 2008 Shared Planet report):

Reusable mugs and cups.

“A lot of our customers are also working to reduce their own environmental impact even as we are. To help them help us, we offer a 10-cent discount in the U.S. and Canada to encourage customers to use their own reuable (sic) mugs for their beverages. Customers staying in a store can also request that their beverages be served in a ceramic mug.

Our U.S. and Canadian customers increased their use of reusable mugs to nearly 22 million times during fiscal 2008 – representing nearly one million pounds (454,000 kilograms) of paper saved. The percentage of total transactions where reusable mugs were used remained constant at 1.3 percent.

We think good habits should start with us. So we’ve challenged our U.S. partners (employees) to use only for-here cups for their own beverages – which would save more than 39 million cups per year. We’ve also asked them to encourage for-here customers to use ceramic cups and commuter mugs when they are taking their beverage to go.”

(Typo in original text).

Starbucks customers need to get into the habit of using their own tumbler.  There are lots of good reasons to use your own cup.  First off, you save ten-cents on your beverage.  Secondly, it is less likely that someone will mistakenly grab the wrong drink. In addition, a customer’s drink will stay warmer longer in a stainless steel tumbler than a paper cup.  And the beverage will taste better!

*****The current Starbucks paper cup*****

Many people ask the question, “Why isn’t the Starbucks paper cup easily recycled?”  The answer is that the cup includes a very fine plastic lining inside of it which is what gives the cup its superb durability.  The Starbucks paper cup was designed to hold very hot beverages and not burn the hands, and not deteriorate when full with very hot coffee.

The current Starbucks paper cup has an outer-shell which is composed of ten-percent post-consumer recycled material, and then an inner lining of low density polyethylene.  The current cup does have impact by reducing virgin tree wood because of the recycled paper fiber in the cup, but it simply doesn’t function as the “green” cup that many consumers and Starbucks partners aspire to proudly show off in their hands.

The current paper cup IS fully recyclable in some cities, but the overwhelming majority of municipalities and jurisdictions will not recycle this current cup due to its polyethylene plastic lining.

*****The future of the Starbucks paper cup*****

The future of the Starbucks paper cup is the quest for an easily recyclable paper cup.  I question whether Starbucks will ever find anything quite as durable as the current cup sans plastic lining.  But that is the challenge.

In May 2009, Starbucks hosted a Cup Summit at their headquarters.  Starbucks brought together thinkers, retailers, cup producers, and stakeholders all in one place to advance the goal of the fully recyclable cup.  Of course in tandem with the goal of the fully recyclable paper cup, is the goal of increasing personal cup use and for-here ware use at Starbucks stores.

The time-frame announced by Starbucks for the recyclable cup is that Starbucks plans to develop and launch this cup by 2012, and that it will be in wide-spread use by 2015.  Starbucks has stated that when the cup is first developed, it will be tested in key metropolitan markets first, and then its use expanded further to more locations.  These goals can be found in the Shared Planet report and Starbucks blogs too.

When all is said and done, hand in hand with Starbucks goals, customers need to change their habits. Just as many customers now bring their own bags to the grocery store, it’s time to bring your own tumbler.  I leave you with the Starbucks cup goals as stated in the 2008 Shared Planet report:

Starbucks goals

Starbucks goals

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(Red) & Starbucks: The year in review October 29, 2008 to October 29, 2009

October 28, 2009

It is estimated that 4,100 men, women, and children, die every day in sub-Sahara Africa from HIV/AIDS. On Wednesday, October 29, 2008, during Leadership Conference in New Orleans, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced the forging of new and exciting Starbucks relationship: Starbucks and (Red) working together to fight HIV in Africa and across the world. [...]

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