Five Greener Stores across Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam are amongst the first in the Asia Pacific region to be certified, with over 20 more expected in 2023 With over 3,500 Greener Stores certified across 20 markets, Starbucks is on a path towards achieving its goal of 10,000 Greener Stores total by 2025 Greener Stores set a new benchmark in environmentally responsible retail for design, construction, and operations, poised to support the company’s 2030 goals of reducing carbon, water, and waste footprints by 50%

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Starbucks today announced its first Greener Stores in the Asia Pacific region, as part of the <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/press/2023/starbucks-verifies-3500-greener-stores-globally/">company’s global expansion of its Greener Store Framework to over 3,500 stores in 20 markets</a>. Located in Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, the five stores are amongst the first of their kind in the company’s Asia Pacific region, with over 20 more expected to be certified this year. This latest round of certifications sets the company well on its way to achieving its goal of 10,000 Greener Stores globally by 2025.

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In support of Starbucks 2030 goals of reducing carbon, water, and waste footprints by 50%, the open-source Greener Stores Framework was co-developed with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The framework includes a set of 25 performance-based standards across environmental impact areas such as energy efficiency, water stewardship, and waste diversion, designed to accelerate the transformation of retail towards lower-impact stores.

“We're excited to continue expanding our Greener Store portfolio worldwide, a key step towards reaching our ambitious resource positive goals. Having been on a sustainability journey for many years now, we’ve already seen results of our Greener Stores in the United States where they first piloted. In fact, when compared to historic store practices, these Greener Stores have shown to deliver 30% water savings and 30% energy reduction,” said Michael Kobori, Starbucks chief sustainability officer. “With a company of Starbucks scale – any one action, no matter how small, has the potential for massive impact. We are heartened by our partners around the world who are stepping up to adopt our Greener Store standards. This is testament of their energy and passion for sustainability that continues to drive our innovation.”

Greener Stores: paving the way towards a more sustainable future

The new Greener Stores in the Asia Pacific region help reduce Starbucks environmental impact through performance-based standards that incorporate design and extend throughout the life of a store. Each Greener Store has a unique combination of sustainable features that qualify for third-party verification on a quarterly basis. This ranges from features like energy and water efficient equipment and appliances, low-emitting paints and sealants, Grounds for Your Garden program, as well as energy efficient HVAC temperature systems and more. Additionally, the new Greener Stores in Asia include elements that go beyond the standard to deliver more robust energy, carbon, water, and waste reductions.

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Singapore’s first Greener Store is strategically located at Jurong Lake Gardens, a showcase for sustainable design and operations, set amidst lush greenery, restored wetlands and habitats for biodiversity. The Greener store itself is similarly designed with long-term, eco-conscious operations in mind, with responsible design, construction and operation, including energy and water efficiency.

Thailand has certified three Greener Stores that operate entirely on electricity, and feature precise energy monitoring capabilities using a detailed energy management system (EMS) that captures energy use data in real-time to maintain high performance and efficiency. The system will enable the stores to identify inefficiencies and help control and conserve energy in the future.

In Vietnam, the Greener Store is equipped with 100% LED lighting and sun shading features that reduce heat gain and energy consumption within the store. The store operates entirely on electricity and has a long-term contract to buy Renewable Energy Certificates to offset the energy used in stores.

“The new Greener Stores in the Asia Pacific region are poised to set a new standard in sustainable retail which we hope will accelerate our movement towards Starbucks resource positive goals,” said Scott Keller, senior vice president, Store Development &amp; Design. “As one of our fastest growing regions, we want to ensure that we are driving growth with a sustainable future in mind for our communities and planet – and Greener Stores are one of the ways that will help us achieve that vision.”

Starbucks also today announced its first in-region Greener Stores in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), as the company continues its global expansion of the Greener Store Framework to leverage its scale for good to accelerate the global movement towards a more sustainable future. The company is also expanding in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) by building all new stores in the region under the Greener Stores framework by the end of 2023 and going forward. In China and Japan, Starbucks plans to update its existing store portfolios by applying Greener Store standards. The aim for Starbucks China is to operate 2,500 Greener Stores in the market by 2025.

Starbucks has set bold global aspirations towards a resource-positive future and can only achieve its goals with the help of partners, customers, industry experts and advocates. The company continues to innovate new ways to reduce their impact on the environment and strive to give back more to the planet than they take from it.

Starbucks scales Greener Store expansion across Asia Pacific towards a more sustainable future : Starbucks Stories Asia

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Starbucks Stories Asia

Starbucks scales Greener Store expansion across Asia Pacific towards a more sustainable future

Located in Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, the five Greener Stores are amongst the first of their kind in the company’s Asia Pacific region, with over 20 more expected to be certified this year.

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https://stories.starbucks.com/asia/stories/2023/starbucks-scales-greener-store-expansion-across-asia-pacific-towards-a-more-sustainable-future/

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The rows of coffee trees planted in neat geometric lines in a corner of Starbucks coffee farm on the slopes of a Costa Rican volcano don't look like a research lab.

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But this unassuming plot of 350 different varietals, or subspecies, of trees belies its important scientific role. While the majority of Hacienda Alsacia's 600 acres function as a working coffee farm, complete with a new Visitor Center that explores the journey of coffee from seedling to cup, 25 acres are devoted to an ambitious task: research and development to help ensure the future of coffee production.

Sabanilla, Costa Rica

Hacienda Alsacia

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The quest is led by Carlos Mario Rodriguez, director of global agronomy for Starbucks, who spends most of his working hours in and around these verdant fields, tinkering with trees that have the potential to yield innovative solutions for the future.

The farm serves as a testing ground where Rodriguez experiments with creating and nurturing specially bred varietals and hybrids, pushing the boundaries of agronomy research to breed trees that are resistant to coffee leaf rust, or roya, which is ravaging coffee crops in Latin America. He also analyzes soil and fine-tunes pruning techniques to increase coffee trees' productivity. It's boots-on-the-ground work with nothing less than the future of your cup of coffee at stake, as climate change forces farmers around the world to adapt their growing practices.

"We had a tipping point in the industry where climate change led to warmer, windier weather that points up the need to innovate to strengthen the coffee industry," said Rodriguez, his skin sun-kissed from working the fields, a Starbucks cap perched on his salt-and-pepper hair.

One way climate change is altering the coffee landscape strikes at the core of what Starbucks considers its caffeinated lifeblood. High-quality arabica coffee with its diversity of flavors is the heart of Starbucks' business, but it's becoming harder to grow in sustainable quantities in the face of climate change. That's because arabica plants are particularly sensitive to even the slightest variations in temperature and rainfall patterns.

Sharing Starbucks research with the world

That's where Rodriguez comes in. Much of his time is devoted to the development of hybrid coffee tree seedlings at the farm's nursery, where his goal is to create hardy, productive trees laden with high-quality coffee cherries.

As part of Starbucks open-source approach to fortifying the coffee industry, new varietals and growing techniques aren't kept in a company vault; they're shared freely with researchers and farmers around the world.

Even those farmers who don't do business with Starbucks benefit from the company's findings. Rodriguez gave Carlos Gallegos, a Costa Rican farmer who doesn't sell coffee to Starbucks, Sarchimor trees, which have performed better than others he's previously planted as the Costa Rican climate continues to evolve. Gallegos said he appreciates the investment in his farm and its future.

"Sarchimor is allowing us to control the coffee leaf rust and increase our productivity," said Gallegos. "The fact that they donated the seeds to our farms has made a significant contribution to our business because of their resistance to coffee leaf rust and higher productivity."

Creating new varietals is painstaking work that demands patience: Rodriguez and his colleagues select promising plants, establish a plot and then wait. And wait. And wait. "It takes 10 to 14 years to see which are strongest and most productive," he said.

Rodriguez has identified 17 new varietals that meet Starbucks demanding quality and size criteria. He scrutinizes the cherries by processing, drying and preparing samples of coffee cherries, which are roasted then cut open to determine their acidity and complexity.

Selective pruning to create uniform trees is also important; uniformly sized trees produce healthier coffee cherries and attract more pickers because they're easier to harvest. It's kind of like baking: you don't want small cookies and large cookies on the same baking pan because they'll cook unevenly.

Rodriguez also tends the prized "Core Collection," which represents the 100 most genetically diverse strains of arabica coffee in the world, sourced more than 50 years ago from Ethiopia, the birthplace of arabica.

Starbucks is one of the first recipients of the Core Collection, distributed by World Coffee Research, a nonprofit committed to finding sustainable ways to promote coffee production.

"We are trying to do everything we can to ensure adequate volumes of the best quality coffee for the market in the volumes that we need," said Timothy Schilling, CEO of World Coffee Research. "Starbucks is a very important partner in this work. They are the only company that we gave the Core Collection to so far."

Rodriguez is planning to cross some of these lines with other high-quality lines to produce new hybrids with good structure and quality and resistance to coffee leaf rust. Schilling expects farmers and other companies to take note. "If Starbucks is nodding its head and saying it's important that we do this research, it has a halo effect," said Schilling.

Open source: Sharing freely is Starbucks path to quality coffee

In 2015, Starbucks donated thousands of seedlings that Rodriguez cultivated from five new hybrid strains he developed to ICAFE, Costa Rica's coffee institute. Rodriguez recently signed an agreement with a Mexican university to donate seeds, and he's in discussions with Indonesia as well.

The donations come with no strings attached. "Farmers don't have to sell coffee to us," said Rodriguez. "Our main goal is to support farmers and improve their living conditions and to support the coffee sector overall."

There is significant concern within the coffee industry about meeting future demand, notes Bambi Semroc, vice president of sustainable markets and strategies for Conservation International, a nonprofit committed to environmental protection. "Starbucks willingness to share what they're learning and the varietals being developed not just with Starbucks suppliers but with the entire agronomy community is really groundbreaking," said Semroc. "Starbucks needs a thriving coffee sector in order to succeed in the future, and they recognize that one way to invest in that is to help everyone."

Rodriguez's work didn't begin in 2013 when Starbucks purchased the 600-acre farm. For years, he's been experimenting on other farms, conducting his experiments piecemeal on bits and pieces of land owned by other Costa Rican farmers. He freely shares the results with those other farmers and World Coffee Research, as well as universities and other research centers.

Since Starbucks purchased Hacienda Alsacia in 2013, the farm's yield has increased by nearly 50 percent. Much of that improvement can be traced to the Farmer Support Center located on the farm, which helps farmers who are part of Starbucks supply chain – and those who aren't – learn how to grow coffee more sustainably, using less water and less land to produce more coffee by relying on shade trees, as well as proper irrigation techniques and soil management to encourage productivity with minimal impact to the environment.

Starbucks has 10 Farmer Support Centers throughout the world; its Costa Rica site was the first. Starbucks has a commitment to purchase 100 percent ethically sourced coffee and contributes toward this goal by investing in its Farmer Support Centers.

Rodriguez assists farmers in setting up their own test plots on their farms, explaining the importance of spacing the trees correctly – if they're planted too close, they compete for nutrients; too far away, farmers aren't maximizing their land.

Soil plays a critical role in nurturing healthy trees, so Rodriguez helps farmers understand the right balance of elements that comprise healthy growing conditions: the healthiest soil contains the correct ratio of potassium, calcium and magnesium but also smaller proportions of elements such as copper and manganese. He also trains farmers to better manage weeds to help with erosion and to create channels to help efficiently move water through farmland.

Perhaps because Rodriguez is in the field every day, tending to his growing trees and actively working to make coffee more sustainable for the entire industry, he's bullish about the future of the coffee bean. "There are certainly changes in the coffee sector, but we are using this time to produce better-quality coffee that everyone will benefit from," he said. "I don't see this as a risk but as an opportunity."

Starbucks farm in Costa Rica is hub of innovation and research directed at securing the future of coffee.

Starbucks farm is research hub

Securing coffee’s future at Starbucks research farm

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Starbucks scales Greener Store expansion across Asia Pacific towards a more sustainable future

Securing coffee’s future at Starbucks research farm