Question

Choose an organisation and comment on how they have been engaging with issues of sustainability in recent years. How have they done well, and how have they done badly?

Answer 1

What Is Sustainability?

Sustainable is an adjective for something that is able to be sustained, i.e, something that is “bearable” and “capable of being continued at a certain level”. In the end, sustainability can perhaps be seen as the process(es) by which something is kept at a certain level.

Let me choose the company starbucks.

Starbucks chief executive officer Kevin Johnson announced Tuesday a renewed focus on sustainability, all with an eye toward eventually “giving more than we take from the planet.”

“Our aspiration is to become resource positive — storing more carbon than we emit, eliminating waste, and providing more clean freshwater than we use,” Johnson, wrote in a letter posted Tuesday.

His letter included preliminary targets for 2030 as well as the company’s commitment to be transparent in its reporting against short- and long-term goals. He also vowed to work with Starbucks partners, customers and other stakeholders on this journey. The company will spend the next year continuing to test and learn before formalizing these sustainability targets as part of the company’s 50^thanniversary in 2021, he wrote.

“Our eyes are wide open knowing that we do not have all the answers or fully understand all the complexities and potential consequences,” Johnson wrote. “Now, it’s time to create an even broader aspiration – and it’s work that will require visionary thinking, new ways of working, investment of resource and urgent action.”l

Starbucks has over 31,000 stores worldwide with 400,000 partners serving 100 million customers a week and the road ahead will require commitment and creativity from partners and customers across the globe as well as from entrepreneurs, non-profits and suppliers, he said.

Starbucks identified key areas in which it can make big impacts by 2030, including expanding plant-based and environmentally friendly menu options; shifting from single-use to reusable packaging; investing in innovative agricultural, water conservation and reforestation practices; looking for ways to better manage waste (including food waste) in stores and in communities; and developing more eco-friendly operations, from stores to supply chain to manufacturing.

Some bad effects on sustainability are

A recent resolution from the nonprofit corporate watchdog As You Sow slammed Starbucks for continuing to provide most customers with single-use plastic cups despite the company’s Greener Cup initiative and criticized the coffee giant’s role in promoting the global to-go coffee culture. As You Sow’s objective is to bring to shareholders’ attention Starbucks’s negligence to fulfill its environmental promises. According to the resolution, Starbucks has fallen dramatically short on meeting an ambitious 2008 commitment to make 25 percent of its cups reusable by 2015. What happened? By 2011, the company had only increased its percentage of reusable cups to 1.9 percent and, as a result, reduced its 2015 goal to 5 percent reusables.

As You Sow’s resolution also addresses the company’s failure to establish a comprehensive policy to phase out its signature jumbo green plastic straws, despite the existence of the credible alternative that is paper straws. The Ocean Conservancy picked up just under half a million straws along coastlines all over the world this past year—a fraction of the total global plastic waste collected. Starbucks—which hands out more than 2 billion plastic straws a year—could be a key player in reducing the count.

As a company with the influence and reach to effect real progress through its environmental commitments, Starbucks arguably has a responsibility to develop and maintain the most sustainable practices it can afford. Still, at least part of the burden falls on consumers to keep the corporation honest. So next time you need a Starbucks fix, be sure to put in a plug for more reusable, and healthy, options.