Cover for pdf - Starbucks

International Grounds
Outside the U.S., some Starbucks
stores have discovered how to reuse
coffee grounds. In Japan, a team
of Starbucks partners realized that
coffee grounds could be used as an
ingredient to make paper. A local
printing company used this paper to
print “Starbucks Press,” the official
Starbucks Japan newsletter.
Starbucks partnered with the
Composting Council of Canada to
promote recycling, waste reduction
and environmental awareness. Our
Canadian stores offered complimen-
tary spent coffee grounds, hosted
in-store composting seminars with
master gardeners, and distributed
useful information on composting.
In Bahrain, the local Starbucks dries
coffee grounds in the sun, packages
them, and gives the grounds to
customers as fertilizer for house plants.
And on Environmental Day in South
Korea, our stores gave their customers
flower pots that contained a bag of
reused coffee grounds for fertilizer,
topped with some planting seeds.
(See photo above, left.)
Waste Reduction and Reuse
C S R 2 0 0 3 E N V I R O N M E N T 66
Our store partners are very innovative when it comes to reducing waste. An example of
this happened eight years ago when a team of store partners discovered how Starbucks
could reuse coffee grounds, the heaviest portion of our waste stream. It evolved into a
program, Grounds for Your Garden, which involves packaging up five-pound bags of coffee
grounds and offering them to our customers, local parks, schools and nurseries as a soil
amendment for gardens.
We also reduce waste in our stores by encouraging our customers to use their own
commuter mugs when purchasing a beverage. Customers receive a discount of $0.10 if
they do. The good news is that customers used commuter mugs more than 13.5 million
times in fiscal 2003, keeping 586,800 pounds of paper and plastic waste from landfills.
Although the overall percentage of commuter mug usage is higher this year compared to
2002, it is still below usage levels from 2001. (See graph on previous page.)
Starbucks also reduces paper waste by serving beverages, upon request, in reusable
ceramic coffee mugs to our customers who plan to enjoy their beverages in our stores. In
addition, Starbucks adopted a policy in 2002 stating that all Starbucks partners should
use reusable mugs for the beverages they consume while at work.
Recycling
There are so many compelling reasons to recycle, from saving natural resources and
energy to reducing the need for new landfills and incinerators. Starbucks is committed
to increasing the amount of recycling in all our company-operated stores, but it comes
with certain challenges. For one, we don’t oversee waste management in all of our
company-operated stores and must rely on our various landlords to place a high priority
on recycling, as well as track their efforts. In addition, some of our stores are located in
communities where commercial recycling facilities are not available.
Our performance for recycling is reported as the number of company-operated stores
where waste management is controlled by Starbucks, and that have recycling programs.
(See graph on previous page.)