Starbucks Wastes Water: The Guardian vs. The Creative Brainwaves of Anneka Tran

On Monday October 6th, it was reported by many mainstream news sources that Starbucks had wasted large amounts of water.

The left-leaning British Newspaper, The Guardian, published the story "Starbucks Wastes Millions of Litres of Water A Day" on their website, theguardian.co.uk.  The Guardian explains that this is the result of a practice of keeping water running during it's "dipper" method of cleaning.   The Guardian includes extraneous (though not unimportant) facts such as: "A single Starbucks tap left running for just over three minutes wastes the amount of water one African needs to survive for a day in drought conditions."

The Guardian's article is a bit more critical than one might expect from a mainstream news source.  Though it never explicitly states an opinion (as a blog might), all of the quotes are from "astonished" citizens, who are outraged at the "supposedly-green" Starbucks organization.  Furthermore, they cite Starbucks' controversial 2006 bid to stop Ethiopian farmers from copyrighting their coffee beans (the though article does explain that a more fair deal was reached.)

Although The Guardian explains briefly that Starbucks will amend it's water use and cleaning practices, the overall tilt of the article seems to be very critical of the coffee giant.  In addition to the Africa quote above, they write: "In the UK, Starbucks has 698 branches, each open for 13 hours a day. Even a slow tap flows three litres of water a minute, meaning Starbucks in the UK is wasting an estimated 1.63m litres a day – enough to supply Matlock village in Derbyshire." This information is not presented as a quote, but simply as fact and may be considered an unnecessary, if dubious, admission. 

In "Starbucks Wasting Water," a blog called The Creative Brainwaves, writes: "Today I was very surprised to read that Starbucks wastes over 23.4m litres of water a day, therefore prompting me to make a quick illustration about it too."

 

The first person account immediately indicates it's biased and less-professional nature.   There is no other text except a link to the Guardian article.  

The drawing that follows (above) is a fairly straightforward political cartoon that shows a Starbucks cup pouring out large drops of water with dollar signs on them.  The obvious interpretation is that Starbucks is wasting money by wasting water.  Whether or not the drawing implies that Starbucks is losing money because of the bad press it will receive in the wake of this story, is unclear.

It is interesting to note that The Guardian's story will likely elicit a more critical reaction to Starbucks than the blog's cartoon.  Perhaps this is due to the very simple nature of the cartoon, but I was surprised to note the harsh criticism of Starbucks indicated in the Guardian article.