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Starbucks Aims to be ecologically green as its logo (a siren of traditions) is literally.

This week, in apublic letter, Kevin Johnson, General Manager of the Giant Coffee, announced a massive thrust across society towardsdurability. Rather than simply switch to effective bulbs or the elimination of straws, the goal is that Starbucks becomes "positively resources", working on a carbon and freshwater deficit, mainly "restore" these resources on the planet. Johnson described a five-step plan to hit this reference note:

1. Expand herbal offers
2. Migration of single-use packaging to reusable use
3. Invest in "innovative and regenerative" procurement chain practices, forest renovation in water suppressing
4. Invest in more sustainable waste management measures, including recycling
5. Innovate "to develop more ecological stores" and other operations

In addition, Starbucks is Gunning for a total reduction of 50% of the withdrawal of water, carbon emissions and landfill waste by 2030.

To be sure, all this seems very noble. It is not a secret for anyone that the environment is in distress, and that food and beverage industries contribute strongly to the current crisis. Even McKinsey & Company, the Massive Management Consulting Corporation, publishedA recent report Declaring global sustainability at "a tipping point", indicate the agro-industry industry - an umbrella the Starbucks supply chain falls outright underestimated at 70% of global freshwater withdrawals.

And then, the coffee industry leads most of its agricultural activities in tropical climates, regions that have been ravaged by climate change. According to paved data byWorld Forest Watch, Forest cover in Guatemala, one of the leading producers of coffee beans in the world, has decreased by 20% since 2001. Take strong use - by the coffee industry, a large amount of cardboard cups and of milk jugs, plastic straws and utensils, wooden stirring pine, paper filters, paper sugar packets, paper towels, paper takeaway and aluminum coffee beans bags, not to mentionShocking food wasteAnd you have a doozy of a planet punching industry.

So, yes, all efforts contribute. But the question is held: can we Starbucks.

RELATED: Starbucks starts 2020 by throwing all new Nondairy drinks

Earlier this year,Starbucks has expanded their nundle milk offers; Now, depending on your postal code, you can get flat white and other espresso drinks based on almond milk, oatmeal, soy milk, even coconut milk. (No word yet when, if ever, the most popularcashew The trend will infiltrate the menu.)

Food options, on the other hand, leave a lot to be desired. OfEight breakfast sandwiches In the menu, seven includes animal protein. Just one, spinach, feta and the white egg envelope are vegetarian. None are totally based on planting. And thePanineous lunch and wraps either cheese or lean protein - or both. Today, if you want to eat plants in Starbucks, you are almost blocked with a choice between classic oatmeal and blueberry oats. (Do not add milk!)

There is also the ubiquitous spectrum of food waste, a problem that society is notorious. (Disclosure: I worked like Barista Starbucks in 2012 and 2013 and can attest to first hand to the astronomical quantity of food waste at the end of each shift. Some nights, I would take home of two dozen pastries and pre-packaged envelopes, yogurts and bento boxes intended for the garbage dump. Good news for a perpetually hungry student. Bad News for a company that trumpets ecological initiatives.)

In 2016, Course Correction, StarbucksFoodshare announced, a plan to end all food waste by the end of 2019. Rather than launching each food scrap slightly satiated at the end of each night - or let the hourly wage employees bring it home - Loan food meals at home would be given to theFood donation connection, ultimately nearly five million meals in the first year and $ 50 million by the end of 2019. Two years later, StarbucksReturn publicly postponed This self-imposed deadline until the end of 2020 (however, being fair, the company donated 10 million meals pre-packaged to date since the beginning of the program).

So, how is the food? On aPost of New York Last week report, many Starbucks locations in Manhattan are staggering the food donation program. When you tap, a representative of the company confirmed at theTo post That only 60% of the thousands of showcases belonging to the company actively participate in the initiative.

Even the Starbucks Signature Ecological Initiative ("serving drinks in reusable containers") is not quite what appearances suggest. Yes, every year, these reusable belovedred cuts-Whve gives customers a discount on holiday drinks through the winter stock out of stock in flat hours. And if you bring your own goblet, you will mark a discount of 10 cents on a drink, any day. These incentives certainly translate into a higher percentage of Starbucks drinks served in reusable containers, right? Society thought yes. In 2008, Starbucks exposed a plan to serve as 25% of all drinks in reusable cups by 2015. Then, 2015 went around and only 5% of all drinks were served in reusable cups.

The same year,Starbucks revised the target. The new plan? Serve 5% of all drinks in reusable cups. (In 2019,The flat figure anywhere from 2 to 6%.)

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At least nobody can reasonably strike the company's infrastructure investments. In 2018, for example, Starbucksbuild a solar farm The size of nearly 300 football fields to power 600 stores. It's just a small fraction of American stores of nearly 9,000 Starbucks stars, but, hey, every effort counts. And the company already uses wind turbines for the source of energy for hundreds of stores in bothThe Chicago Metropolitan area and northwestern Pacific region.

Then there is the most tangible mark of eco-friendliness: trees. Since 2016, Starbucks has planted more than 30 million cafes in three key breeding areas (El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico City). It is a testimony of the pure size of the society's carbon footprint, however, that such efforts still do not bring Starbucks to carbon neutrality. Nespresso, a great European competitor, plans to plant only five million coffee in the main agricultural areas - a movement that,By society, puts on the Nespresso track to reach the carbon neutrality by the end of the year.

No matter how you cut it, it is a discouraging task, passing green while also keeping the growing green. But Starbucks seems ready to answer the song of the siren of sustainability - at least publicly. "Today is an important step in our business, because we declare our concern for the future of our planet," wrote Johnson in his letter "and undertakes to do more."

Next? Starbucksplans to eliminate the straws.