Follow Starbucks’ 15 Year Journey to 100% Ethically Sourced Coffee | Conservation International 

Kudos to two incredible organizations that are working on change and a solution. Too often we find people and companies pointing figures and acting as critics. What are they doing to create change? It is not difficult to identify a challenge or problem, the difficulty comes in working on a solution.

I'm a barista at a Starbucks in a large grocery store and Starbucks, from where I'm standing, doesn't give a flying fuck about ethics. It SAYS we're supposed to always have two people in the kiosk but has let the grocery store, for YEARS, understaff the kiosk. They come and inspect every once in awhile, the manager of the grocery store gives them a little song and dance, they let it slide and we remain understaffed. Because of the understaffing, we can't do things by the book. All the tasks that Starbucks fantasizes that a perfectly run Starbucks should be getting done are tasks we have to ignore b/c we're too busy making drinks as fast as we can. We also have to wear these little timers on our aprons. Why? Appearances. They just make our jobs more difficult b/c they keep falling off our aprons. That's what Starbucks is about: appearances. Not ethics. So when Starbucks says that it's practicing ethical coffee bean purchasing or whatever, I seriously doubt it. Look, Starbucks is about selling overpriced coffee and overpriced crap to gullible hipsters.

Ok ok, it's amazing but, what happened to all those threes that where there before the "increased production to help local farmers"? Let's be honest. With 7 billions of us and increasing there is no longer gonna be any such a thing as sustainable .. "anything". We are just too many and even drinking a simple cup of coffee (that in the Starbucks system means wasting a paper cup and a plastic lid every single time!!!!!!!) has an unsustainable impact on the environment. You might be helping people but you'r not helping the environment. And we know people on heart are doing just fine (actually way too much), wile the planet itself is dying because of it. So why don't you focus a bit less on the pockets of the farmers and a bit more on the threes that, to fill those pockets (and our cups), got taken down? Well I know why .. care for humans gets supported 360 degrees while care for the threes gets opposed 360 degrees. So basically we are way too many and we still don't really care. So we will deserve to face our destiny which obviously is to go extinct very .. but VERY soon, maybe with a cup of "politically correct" coffee in our hands. So amazing uh?! My suggestion, stop taking your coffee away in a cup and ask for a ceramic mug, sit and enjoy (as it's done in some countries where coffee doesn't sucks and people still know how to live). You'll not make any difference but at least you know you saved one cup and one plastic lid which is way better that to shave a hill for the farmers.