Is Starbucks Guilty of Green Washing

Is Starbucks Guilty of Green Washing Photo by Cherrysweetdeal via Flickr Starbucks is the world’s largest coffee house company, with over 20,000 stores in 62 countries. The environmental mission statement of the company claims that it is “committed to a role of environmental leadership in all facets of the business…” According to their mission statement, they aim to fulfill their goals by “understanding environmental issues”, “developing innovative and flexible solutions to bring about change”, “striving to buy, sell, and use environmentally friendly products”, and “instilling environmental responsibility as a corporate value”. In fact, their website has an entire section dedicated to their environmental cause and it highlights their efforts towards building greener stores, recycling and reducing waste, and ethically sourcing their coffee; but how far does the corporation truly go in accomplishing their mission? The issue of whether Starbucks is sincere in its efforts to promote environmental sustainability or not is frequently under question. Theyve often been accused of green washing, or the practice of using misleading information to present an environmentally responsible public image. Recently, Starbucks released a $1 reusable coffee cup whose design is aimed to create a cost effective way to encourage customers to reduce their waste. The company encourages customers to bring in their reusable cups by offering a 10 cent discount on their coffee refills. By the year 2015, Starbucks aims to increase the behavior of using multi-use cups from the current 1.9% to 5%. However, the benefit of encouraging the use of reusable cups depends on several factors. Some important considerations include the average number of uses that the cup gets (estimated to be roughly about one month of use), the impact of the plastic used in the production of the cup, the issue of the possibility of cross-contaminat ion of germs and the potential of negative health impacts for humans or the fact that the reusable cups are produced in China and must be transported to the United States. The idea of integrating a reusable cup in the everyday routine of coffee drinkers would be immensely beneficial in reducing the waste incurred by disposable cups, as roughly one billion cups a year are consumed by Starbucks coffee drinkers alone. Most Starbucks cups cannot be recycled in paper recycling systems because of the plastic lining inside the cups that keeps liquids from running out. The plastic lining in coffee cups was a concept developed by Starbucks to end the wasteful practice of double cupping hot beverages, but while solving one problem, it created another. Additionally, Starbucks was the first company to create cups that contain 10% post consumer recycled content, which is estimated to save thousands of trees, save half a million gallons of waste water, and several million pounds of garbage from landfills. Additionally, Starbucks claims to be an organization that “strives to instill environmental responsibility. However, in 2008 the wasteful water practices of the company came under great scrutiny when it was discovered that nearly 6.2 million gallons of water were being wasted a day. The company employed the use of dipper because it was believed to be the more sanitary option for washing spoons. After the discovery of such immense water waste, Starbucks pledged to reduce water consumption by 25% in company owned stores by the year 2015, and quickly began to look for alternative spoon washing methods. Since 2008, there has been a decrease in water waste by 17.7%, which may be an improvement, but ultimately these wasteful practices and the claim of being environmentally conscious or responsible closely resemble the practice of green marketing, a corporation’s attempt to associate its products, services, or identity with environmentalism. Ultimately, the claim that they are a company who aims to “buy, sell, and use environmentally friendly products” is a bit of an oxymoron. The coffee industry in and of itself is not sustainable. The cultivation of coffee requires that the native vegetation of tropical countries be removed so that the soils become vulnerable to erosion and loss of topsoil. Coffee also has a very large water footprint, requiring 140 liters of water to produce a single cup of coffee. By promoting coffee consumption, Starbucks is only perpetuating the growth of consumerism under the guise of environmental responsibility.