Starbucks' wasteful ways

Forget Starbucks'... We'll roast your gourmet coffee to order: it's fresher, tastes richer, and cost's less!
For the office or for the home. We ship anywhere
visit us at
http://www.caffe-amante.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When it comes to coffee there's no better known brand than Starbucks, and with more than 10,000 stores worldwide it boasts social and environmental responsibility. But the coffee giant is being accused of wasting huge amounts of water.

An investigation by a British newspaper is asking why Starbucks has a policy of leaving a tap running while its coffee shops are open, wasting an estimated 23 million litres of water a day.

Starbucks says the running water is the best way to keep utensils clean but environmentalists say it's an unnecessary waste.

Each Starbucks has a dipper well, fed by a continuous stream of cold water. The company claims it prevents bacteria from growing but some say this is not acceptable.

"The average dipping well in a Starbucks wasted 300,000 litres of water a year and that's an incredible amount of water. And we think they could quite easily adopt new procedures or adopt new technologies that could reduce this water wastage significantly," says Victoria Higgins from Waterwise.

New Zealand has 43 stores and if each is wasting 300,000 litres of water, that's 13 million litres a year - enough water to fill 300 backyard swimming pools.

The global impact of this is huge with Starbucks wasting enough daily water for the entire two million-strong population of drought-hit Namibia in Africa.

Yet its countries like Namibia that Starbucks says it's committed to helping and on its website it boasts of preserving natural resources. It has also campaigned for safe drinking water in poorer parts of the world.

Starbucks' New Zealand manager would not comment on the situation but has emailed his staff saying keep the water flowing.

Meanwhile head office in America says it is considering other options