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Starbucks expands Greener Store initiative globally

Starbucks

To celebrate its 50th anniversary, Starbucks is expanding its open-source Greener Store Framework, which will allow the brand to test scalable sustainable solutions to help achieve its Planet Positive goals.

This includes reducing its carbon emissions, water usage, and landfill by 50 per cent.

The Greener Store Framework was announced in 2018, and co-developed with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The framework aims to reduce the brand’s environmental impact and leverage its scale for good, accelerating the global sustainable movement.

Currently the framework consists of more than 2300 Greener Stores in the United States and Canada. Starbucks will use this program to build and retrofit 10,000 Greener Stores globally by 2025.

The first Greener Store outside of the US and Canada will be opened in Shanghai, China, with a focus on circularity, reducing waste, repurposing goods, and serving as a platform for future innovation.

Starbucks will also be opening two additional experiential Greener Stores, one in Southern California and one in Starbucks’ hometown of Seattle, Washington.

“Our work to become planet positive begins with coffee at origin, and carries through to our stores, right to our customers’ hands,” says Michael Kobori, Starbucks Chief Sustainability Officer.

“I’m proud to say that our partners’ energy and passion for sustainability pushes us every day and is the reason why we’ve seen great adoption of our Greener Store standards.”

The Starbucks Greener Stores in North America have incorporated design into performance-based standards, and have seen a 30 per cent reduction in energy consumption compared to previous store designs. This equates to the amount of electricity that is used by roughly 30,000 homes per year.

These stores also have state-of-the-art technologies that treat and conserve water, which reduces Starbuck’s annual water use by more than 30 per cent. This saves more than 1.3 billion gallons of water annually.

More than 90 per cent of these Greener Stores have also adopted waste diversion and circular practices, including recycling and composting, and have adopted Starbucks’ Grounds for Your Garden and FoodShare programs.

“We’ve proven designing and building greener stores is not only responsible, but also good for business,” says Andy Adams, Starbucks Senior Vice President in Store Development.

“In 2018, we created a new benchmark in retail that goes beyond construction and design to address long-term, eco-conscious operations. Today, we expand the Greener Stores benchmark globally to accelerate our progress toward our Planet Positive goals.”

Over the course of 2022, the brand further plans to expand the program, opening Greener stores in Japan, the United Kingdom, and Chile.

It also plans to extend its commitment beyond company operated stores to licensees and joint venture partners to innovate and expand its sustainability programming, delivering more robust energy, carbon, water, and waste reductions.

Starbucks is also planning to open its ASU-Starbucks Center for the Future of People and the Planet in December. This centre is built in collaboration with the Arizona State University and will be a research and innovation facility that aims to find new ways to design, build, and operate Starbucks stores.

This centre will be responsible for developing a roadmap for the Greener Store education efforts. This will also see the creation of a toolkit and learning library which will be open-sourced and available to Starbucks’ stakeholders and more, via its Starbucks Global Academy.

Part of the Greener Stores Framework also sees accelerated use of clean energy, through onsite solar power and renewable energy contracts and investments. Earlier in 2021, Starbucks finished installing a one-megawatt solar array at the Starbucks Carson Valley Roasting Plant and Distribution Center. The company estimates that on-site solar energy will provide nearly a third of the Roasting Plant and Distribution Center’s electricity for the year.

For more information on the Greener Stores Framework, click here.

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