Consumer misconceptions, misguided legislative policies, and overzealous marketers make Starbucks’ struggle to find a recycling solution for its cup a challenging process.
At the Sustainable Packaging Symposium 2011 held last March in Chicago, Jim Hanna, director of Environmental Impact for Starbucks Coffee Co., gave a presentation on some of the unintended consequences that are surfacing in the move toward more sustainable packaging. Hanna used Starbucks’ own experiences to illustrate some of the pitfalls. Following is a transcript of Hanna’s presentation, edited for clarity:
If anyone is not familiar with Starbucks, about 60 million customers a week walk through our doors. I share that with you because for me that is of strategic importance to the company. I have 60 million opportunities to influence our customers around sustainability and around everything that is important to me, on a weekly basis. We have about an 8% return rate from our customers, which means that 8% of our customers are repeat customers on a daily basis. So we have a captive audience from that perspective.
We have about 16,000 retail stores around the country—I mention that here because not all Starbucks stores are actually free-standing company stores. We call our employees partners. We have about 155,000 partners around the world, and we operate in 54 countries, soon to be 55 when we start in India this fall.
I share a mission as a company not just for platitudes, and not just to create a touchy-feely environment, but for Starbucks, passion is what drives our company. Passion is what is so important to our brand. And we have very passionate customers.
Everyone has an opinion about Starbucks, one way or another and not all good, but generally, mostly good. But they are passionate about this brand. We need to nurture that passion; we need to inspire that passion to remain as a company on the leading edge, because frankly folks, we are just selling coffee. We need to move beyond selling coffee to selling an experience.
One of my jobs is to maintain the reputation of our brand. This is really key to us because the demographic of our customers demands that we operate in a responsible fashion. It demands that we operate as an ethical company.
For our company, sustainability is really all about climate mitigation because we are a company that relies specifically and exclusively on this fragile, agricultural product called the Arabica coffee bean. We are already seeing evidence that climate change is impacting the Arabica coffee bean harvest through increased pest infestation, increased erosion, changing weather events, changing temperatures, and changing rain patterns. Basically, the seasons are changing, and the coffee farmers are telling us that this is a problem. So as we project 10, 20, 30 years out into the future, for us climate change isn’t just about altruism and doing the right thing, it’s really about the survival of our company to be viable supplier for coffee into the future.
In one positive sense, this really gives me the podium within our company to talk about why we need to be tackling this issue head-on and why it’s not just about doing the right thing, but it’s really about doing everything we can to mitigate climate changes. It’s an exciting place to be, but it’s a dangerous place to be at the same time.
When it comes to our company’s carbon footprint, Scope 2 emissions represent 75% of our footprint and come from purchased energy for our stores (electricity and natural gas, where applicable). Scope 1 emissions represent 25% of our footprint and are a combination of our five roasting plants, refrigerants, company aircraft, and nitrous oxide. Do you know where the nitrous oxide comes from? Whipped cream! And because nitrous oxide is such a potent greenhouse gas—250 times more potent than CO2—it actually represents a larger contributor to Starbucks’ greenhouse gas footprint than all of our roasting plants combined.
The reason I share this with you is not to get you to change your drink recipe because I know you love it, but to point out how these hidden unintended consequences of not thoroughly doing your carbon footprint, not thoroughly measuring your emissions, have serious ramifications to a company’s total environmental footprint and to a company’s operations. Until two years ago, we had no focus on nitrous oxide, and now we are really focusing on changing the way we provide that great-tasting whipped cream in a way that doesn’t impact the climate.
Source: Greenerpackage.com