My Starbucks Boycot

So after a few months of Starbucks boycotting, I am still on the verge of whether I am going to be returning or not. Brian Berry asked one of the Starbucks' managers some questions regarding recycling and their water consumption, and it answered some of my questions as well as confirmed the sad reality that water is in fact being wasted. 

I started to receive tweets from Starbucks and she said something about their (PRODUCT RED) campaign and all that that involves. Apparently, 5 cents from the purchase of the (PRODUCT RED) drinks is going to be donated to Africa charities. Cool? I'm not sure.

I mean, obviously, that is AWESOME. Starbucks and Africa-- two great things put together! But.. 5 cents from these drinks is approximately 1% of the price of the drink, if you get a Grande. Which I think is pretty ridiculous. Come on-- you're a multi million dollar company, you can afford more than 5 cents per cup. AND, it's only 3 specific drinks from the whole list of all the drinks available. That is even more ridiculous to me. What if I don't want a Peppermint Mocha Twist but I still want my 1% to go to the kids in Africa? This whole campaign is very confusing. 

So, I tried to put it in perspective. I figured (with my mom's help, of course) that I should try to figure out how much Starbucks donates to charities aside from this new campaign. So I googled it and didn't find jack. I'll have to get back to that later- but here is what I did find...

     Starbucks has the campaign "Grounds for your Garden" and has since 1999- a great thing for our environment and our landfills because coffee grounds make up an astounding percentage of our landfill space believe it or not... 

     In 2004, Starbucks reduced the size of their napkins and store garbage bags which reduced their solid waste by 1.8 million pounds. That's pretty sick...

     Apparently, the FDA approved the first ever approval to use recycled content in food packaging for Starbucks coffee cups. That's a major thing for me too- although they don't allow us to readily recycle the cups they give us, at least they've been recycled once before!)

   The 2005 National Recycling Coalition Recycling Works Award went to Starbucks because of their contributions to the environment. (the pessimistic part of me says that the NRCRW doesn't have very high standards but good job Starbucks..)

   Starbucks beans are COMPLETELY AND SOLELY FAIR TRADE. To me, the people and the environment and the economy all work together. It all works together and this is super vital to the eco-friendlyness of Starbucks to me.

     Starbucks was ranked #15 on the EPA's Top 25 Green Power Partners for purchases of renewable energy. Interesting...

On a negative note... Starbucks wastes 6,181,626 gallons of water a day (according to the UK Sun) In some ways, that outweighs some of the above things..

Thus, my quest for eco-frendliness continues. Hopefully a "green" coffee-house comes close to me because I really am missing my coffee. 

I'm sure this will be an ever going debate for me, this is not over yet!