Starbucks, the 800 pound gorilla
Recently, I’ve been writing more for TriplePundit. It’s forcing me to think really critically about business and sustainability. I love the feeling of talking to people about the subjects that matter, too.
If you want to find my old articles you can go to the Triple Pundit website and click my name. but before that check out this article I wrote about Starbucks.
I wrote about Starbucks just a few weeks ago, questioning whether America’s best loved coffeehouse is greenwashing. My opinion is a little more middle of the road now.
“We’re aggressively pursuing strategies that address this problem to mitigate and reduce the impact of our global environmental footprint,” Hanna tells TriplePundit, (because climate change poses a threat to their coffee business.) While I admire Starbucks for being so vocal about what they are doing…no one can deny that Starbucks is the 800 pound gorilla in the room…The Cup Summit was a fascinating case study with lots of academic talk about “systems thinking,” but let’s get serious: a company like Starbucks with so much power has huge potential to do better.
4/29/2010 UPDATE: The article was featured on the Starbucks Gossip blog. One comment on the subject: “Just from purely financial and stocking point of view this is a waste, How often in the summer do you call around to find Iced Venti cups?”
Also interesting: some baristas point out that baristas are also partly responsible for this waste because their free drinks on breaks are also in paper and plastic.
3P got 24 tweets on this particular subject. That’s a lot of eyeballs and I’m humbled to be part of such a network.
Also: interesting perspective FOR Starbucks on a blog about accountability and profitability.
