A simple flaw leads to major impacts!

Is it just me, or when you think of Starbucks don’t you envision a company committed to social responsibility.  I don’t know if it’s because their headquarters is located in the “green” city of Seattle, the rustic ambience of their coffeehouses, or their extensive global responsibility initiatives, but I’ve always considered them a pioneer in the area of environmental stewardship.

Here’s a curveball.  I read an article in my town newspaper this week about a group of students from one of the area’s middle schools (Salem Middle School) that investigated the recycling efforts at a local Starbucks coffeehouse for their school project.1 After completing the study for ten days, here was the resulting data:

• 122 pounds of recyclable material was collected by the students which the store would have ordinarily thrown away to ultimately end up in a landfill.  This would equate to 4,450 pounds per annum for this one store.
• Assuming all 11,000 stores didn’t have an established program to recycle, approximately 1.35 million pounds (670 tons) of recyclables would be diverted to landfills every ten days, almost 49 million pounds per year.

How could this happen??  With all of the resources they’ve allocated to easing their burden on the environment, how could Starbucks overlook such an obvious point of by-product waste generation?

Proper recycling zones = Effective recycling

A point shared in the article was some landlords of the spaces that Starbucks leases don’t offer recycling.  Isn’t Starbucks a large enough corporation to leverage having a stipulation to place recycling receptacles within the confines of their stores in their lease agreements?  If a landlord won’t provide them with the necessary receptacles, I would advise each store manager to purchase them as a line item in their expense budget and place them in established zones throughout the store.  From a financial perspective, it’s a drop in the bucket when compared to what the corporation invests annually to support their marketing and advertising campaigns.

Also, Starbucks allocates millions of dollars towards research and development each year.  They are looking to source and use materials with a higher percentage of recycled content that can also be further recycled or reused at its end of use.  Why make this annual investment if you are not going to collect and send the recyclable material to a recycling center?

Create supplier scorecards

Finally, Starbucks should follow in the footsteps of several industry leaders (i.e. – WalMart, Proctor & Gamble, Kaizer Healthcare) and develop a supplier scorecard.  Their efforts towards recycling have been targeted at their materials end of use, but perhaps they need to focus upstream in the supply chain.  They are being left to deal with the by-products of their negligent suppliers. 

LCA’s – The lifeline of sustainable development

Starbucks should mandate their suppliers adhere to the same stringent standards they’ve adopted for themselves, or should look elsewhere until they find a willing partner.  After all, a true life cycle analysis for a product focuses on the complete impact of a product from harvest to end of life, and not just on the impacts created by their own internal processes.

References:
¹  The Cary News, August 3, 2011, p. 8A.