Plastic straws to be replaced with new recyclable strawless lid and alternative-material straw options

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Move builds upon a $10M commitment to develop a fully recyclable and compostable global cup solution

Marks significant milestone in the company’s thirty-year history in sustainable innovations

SEATTLE; July 9, 2018 – Today, Starbucks Coffee Company (NASDAQ: SBUX) announced it will eliminate single-use plastic straws from its more than 28,000 company operated and licensed stores by making a strawless lid or alternative-material straw options available, around the world.&nbsp;Starbucks, the largest food and beverage retailer to make such a global commitment, anticipates the move will eliminate more than one billion plastic straws per year from Starbucks stores.

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Starbucks has designed, developed and manufactured a strawless lid, which will become the standard for all iced coffee, tea and espresso beverages. The lid is currently available in more than 8,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada for select beverages including Starbucks Draft Nitro and Cold Foam. The lid is also being piloted for Nitro beverages in additional markets including China, Japan, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.&nbsp;In addition, Starbucks will begin offering straws made from alternative materials – including paper or compostable plastic - for Frappuccino® blended beverages, and available by request for customers who prefer or need a straw.

“For our partners and customers, this is a significant milestone to achieve our global aspiration of sustainable coffee, served to our customers in more sustainable ways,” said Kevin Johnson, president and chief executive officer for Starbucks.

Customers in Seattle and Vancouver will be the first to see the strawless lids implemented, starting this fall, with phased rollouts within the U.S. and Canada to follow in FY19. A global rollout of the strawless lid will follow, beginning in Europe where strawless lids will arrive in select stores in France and the Netherlands, as well as in the UK just as the market expands its 5p paper cup charge to 950 stores, to further promote reusability.

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“Starbucks goal to eliminate plastic straws by 2020 from their stores globally represents the company’s forward thinking in tackling the material waste challenge in totality,” said Erin Simon, director of sustainability research &amp; development and material science at World Wildlife Fund, U.S. “Plastic straws that end up in our oceans have a devastating effect on species. As we partner with Starbucks in waste reduction initiatives such as Next Gen Consortium Cup Challenge and WWF’s Cascading Materials Vision, we hope others will follow in their footsteps.”

“Starbucks decision to phase out single-use plastic straws is a shining example of the important role that companies can play in stemming the tide of ocean plastic. With eight million metric tons of plastic entering the ocean every year, we cannot afford to let industry sit on the sidelines, and we are grateful for Starbucks leadership in this space,” said Nicholas Mallos, director of Ocean Conservancy’s Trash Free Seas program.

Starbucks has a 30-year track record of focusing on sustainability across all aspects of its business, including achieving 99 percent ethically-sourced coffee. In addition to today’s announcement, Starbucks has previously committed $10 million to develop and help bring to market, a fully recyclable and compostable hot cup, in partnership with Closed Loop Partners, through the NextGen Cup Consortium and Challenge.

As Starbucks chief executive officer Kevin Johnson outlined in his presentation to investors at the Oppenheimer Consumer Conference in June, the company is focused on adapting to rapidly changing consumer trends with cold beverages accounting for more than 50% of Starbucks beverage mix in the U.S., up from 37% just five years ago. The movement to eliminate single-use plastic straws has been gaining tremendous momentum globally, with consumers showing increased concern for the greater issue of waste, of which straws is just a part. That’s why Starbucks recognizes the work ahead to build on its long history in sustainability, which includes:

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Spanish version:&nbsp;<a href="https://storiesadmin.starbucks.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Press_Release_-_Sustainability_Milestone_Spanish_Version.pdf">STARBUCKS ELIMINARÁ POPOTES DE PLASTICO A NIVEL GLOBAL PARA EL 2020</a>

Starbucks announced it will eliminate single-use plastic straws from its more than 28,000 company operated and licensed stores by making a strawless lid or alternative-material straw options available, around the world.

Starbucks to Eliminate Plastic Straws Globally by 2020

Starbucks Stories Asia

https://stories.starbucks.com/asia/stories/2018/starbucks-to-eliminate-plastic-straws-globally-by-2020/

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Starbucks is adding a new ingredient to take “bean to cup” transparency to the next level: traceability technology.

As a continuation of its ethical sourcing commitment, Starbucks will launch a pilot program with select coffee farmers in Costa Rica, Colombia and Rwanda to develop next-level data technology to log and share real-time information along the journey of coffee beans with the aim of driving positive impact to smallholder farmers within its supply chain.

“Over the next two years, we will look to demonstrate how technology and innovative data platforms can give coffee farmers even more financial empowerment,” said Kevin Johnson, chief executive officer at Starbucks, who will discuss the announcement on stage at the 2018 Annual Meeting of Shareholders in Seattle today. “We’ll leverage an open-source approach to share what we learn with the rest of the world.”

&nbsp;Traceability technology could have profound implications for connecting coffee drinkers to the farmers who grow it, said Arthur Karuletwa, director of traceability at Starbucks.

“This could be a seismic change in an industry that hasn’t had much innovation in the way coffee moves across borders and oceans,” he said. “At the same time, I’ve met farmers who have very little by way of possessions, but they have a mobile phone. Digital has become the economic engine of this century, and traceability preserves the most valuable assets we have as human beings – our identity.”

Building on 99 percent ethically sourced coffee

In 2015, Starbucks announced it had reached an industry milestone of 99 percent ethically sourced coffee, consciously leaving the remaining 1 percent to allow for discovery and work in new origins. Any company can claim to source sustainably, and many do. But since its beginning, Starbucks has known the names of the farmers within its supply chain, including the more than 380,000 farms it worked with last year alone, Karuletwa said. The ability to incorporate technology into this process means the potential to connect directly with tens of thousands of sustainable coffee farmers, and the possibility of financial inclusion for these farmers, he said.

In late 2015, Starbucks and Conservation International announced the <a href="https://www.sustaincoffee.org/">Sustainable Coffee Challenge</a> at the U.N. climate negotiations in Paris as a call to action to make coffee the world’s first sustainably <a href="https://news.starbucks.com/news/making-coffee-the-worlds-first-sustainably-sourced-agriculture-product">sourced agricultural product</a>.

Since then, more than 90 members across the industry have joined the Challenge to focus on the future of sustainable coffee, including roasters, retailers, governments and non-governmental organizations. &nbsp;

“Starbucks deserves a massive amount of credit for driving innovation in sustainable coffee,” said Dr. M. Sanjayan, chief executive officer of Conservation International. “In two decades of collaboration, they have consistently adopted new approaches to increase transparency and effectiveness, and so it is no surprise that they are driving forward with this new technology. The promise of connecting coffee&nbsp;farmers to&nbsp;coffee&nbsp;drinkers is an extraordinary leap&nbsp;in transparency and accountability, and it&nbsp;speaks volumes about Starbucks&nbsp;commitment to creating a product that is good for people and for the planet.”

With its technology pilot program in Costa Rica, Rwanda and Colombia, Starbucks hopes to develop and demonstrate over the next two years how technology and innovative data platforms can give coffee farmers even more financial independence and confidence. Conservation International will measure the impact of traceability to understand the benefits farmers will receive from this technology. True to their open-source philosophy, Starbucks plans to share this system and what it learns openly.

Starbucks has already invested more than $100 million to support coffee communities, improve farmer livelihoods, and ensure a long-term supply of high-quality coffee, including as part of <a href="https://news.starbucks.com/news/sustainability-is-at-the-heart-of-starbucks-coffee-sourcing">Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.)</a>&nbsp;practices&nbsp;as well as farmer support centers, farmer loans and a commitment to provide 100 million healthy, disease-resistant <a href="https://news.starbucks.com/press-releases/starbucks-100million-coffee-trees">coffee trees to farmers</a>&nbsp;most impacted by climate change.

Ambassador Bill Kayonga, chief executive officer of Rwanda's National Agricultural Export Development Board (NAEB), said the traceability pilot is right in line with the vision of the Rwandan coffee sector.

“Traceability builds value for farmers and is transforming the coffee sector in Rwanda, which in turn strengthens the country as a whole,” Kayonga said.

Ronald Peters, executive director of the Costa Rican Coffee Institute (ICAFE), said supply chain transparency and fair wages for coffee farmers have always been important in Costa Rica, and that “working with Starbucks is like working with a friend” on the path to reach the ultimate goal in a world of coffee traceability and sustainability.

“For many years, Costa Rica has had a great relationship with Starbucks. We share the same values and goals in looking to improve the livelihoods of our coffee sector by ensuring the source of our amazing coffee with a sense of sustainability,” Peters said. “Many years ago, our controls and transactions were all done by paper, and today we are even talking about blockchain technology. This shows us that, more than being at the front of every technological advancement, having the information and being flexible and adaptable are important.”&nbsp;

Juan Esteban Orduz, president of the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation in North America, said he’s looking forward to what’s ahead.

“The Colombian Coffee Growers Federation and Starbucks share the same vision to support coffee farmers and ensure they have the tools needed to be successful. Projects like these are going to make traceability a reality. We look forward to the results of the pilot and seeing how farmers in Colombia can benefit.”

Ambassador Camilo Reyes, Colombian Ambassador to the U.S., said traceability technology will have both a personal and economic impact for farmers.

"Coffee has always stimulated economic growth and transformation in Colombia -- and with the Starbucks coffee ‘bean-to-cup’ traceability pilot project, it can do even more for our country,” he said. “By giving Colombian farmers and the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation (FNC) a face in the marketplace, this project will help empower farmers and their families and provide a boost to local communities and&nbsp;our economy. We always knew little coffee beans packed a big punch – and now we will have the ability to track their boldness, thanks to Starbucks.”

Today’s announcement represents the technology-enriched next step of work Starbucks has been doing for years to help sustainable coffee farmers establish individual identities, to give customers more transparency and to promote a higher level of accountability, Karuletwa said.

&nbsp;“A coffee farmer once told me, ‘These things you do for our coffee are not just about the preservation of a product, they are a preservation of us,’” Karuletwa said.

Karuletwa speaks poetically of coffee and the time he’s spent with coffee farmers in the space he calls “the first 10 feet.” &nbsp;

“To me, traceability of a global product such as coffee – one that has so much human depth and magnitude – is almost like taking an unedited photograph of ourselves. It’s an image that includes all that ails us, but more importantly, all that sustains us,” he said.

Apart from the transparency that traceability technology will provide at scale in relation to sustainability, Karuletwa also has a vision of using the technology to create an “authentic, seamless, dynamic” one-to-one connection between farmers across the globe and someone drinking coffee at, say, a Starbucks in Seattle or Shanghai.

“Coffee producers continue to embrace tools that equip them to be more sustainable in an ever-changing environment,” said Jean Nkunzimana of the MISOZI Coffee Cooperative in Rwanda. “From unpredictable climate changes to commodity price volatility, farmers continue to face multiple challenges in a global marketplace. With identity being the foundation of traceability, farmers have been able to leverage the value of being identified to create a credit history of the value of their production, as well as an acknowledgment of their self-worth.”

That connection to farmers is at the heart of the pilot, said Karuletwa.

“Elevation, process, entomology, soil composition, terroir, nutrients, rainfall – it carries little meaning if I’m not also talking about the rest of what makes the coffee possible, and that’s the people,” Karuletwa said. “The taste of coffee eventually disappears off the palette, but what never leaves you are the stories of a people and the places. My hope is that this project will create familiarity between farmers and customers and enhance empathy, a commodity we have great need of today.”

As a continuation of the company’s ethical sourcing commitment, Starbucks will launch a pilot program with select coffee farmers in Costa Rica, Colombia and Rwanda to develop traceability technology.

Starbucks to pilot ‘bean to cup’ traceability

Starbucks to pilot ‘bean to cup’ traceability with new technology

https://stories.starbucks.com/asia/stories/2018/starbucks-to-pilot-bean-to-cup-traceability/

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Video by Luanne Dietz, Jessey Dearing and Josh Trujillo/ Story by Bonnie Rochman / Starbucks Newsroom

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<a href="https://news.starbucks.com/multimedia/type/17">Download video for media use</a>

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.

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.

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.&nbsp;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&nbsp;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 nine 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.”

Breeding and selecting new varietals is helping create solutions to counter the effects of global warming on coffee trees – and it’s happening at Starbucks’ Costa Rican farm Hacienda Alsacia.

Starbucks farm is hub for research and innovation

Securing the future of coffee: Starbucks farm is hub for research and innovation

https://stories.starbucks.com/asia/stories/2018/starbucks-farm-research-and-innovation/

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The first time Alan Tong tasted Starbucks’ Yunnan Single Origin coffee, he cried.

“It was more than a cup of coffee,” he said.

For Tong, contained in each cup are the memories of the coffee farmers in China’s Yunnan Province, of walking among the coffee trees, of seeing the faces of those who pick the coffee cherrie&nbsp;and of all the care and precision that led to that moment.

“There is so much hard work (in that cup),” said Tong, the director of the Starbucks China Farmer Support Center. “Every slurp reminds me of unforgettable scenes and stories.”

Starbucks Yunnan Single Origin coffee is known for its rich flavor, herbal notes and smooth feel and is now sold across China in the nearly 130 Starbucks stores serving premiere Starbucks Reserve coffees. Starting this week, it's also being roasted for the first time in China at the <a href="https://news.starbucks.com/press-releases/starbucks-opens-state-of-the-art-premium-reserve-roastery-in-shanghai">new Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Shanghai.&nbsp;</a>

But when Tong takes a sip, it’s the taste of everything he’s worked for over the last five years.

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It started with just 25 coffee growers. It was 2012 and Tong was driving around the mountainous region of Pu’er, known as the capital of Chinese coffee. Starbucks had purchased its first coffee from the country here in 2009, and was working to promote the region’s coffee as it grew its retail business in China. Now, Tong was visiting farms and inviting farmers to a training in Coffee and Farmer Equity <a href="https://news.starbucks.com/news/sustainability-is-at-the-heart-of-starbucks-coffee-sourcing">(C.A.F.E.) Practices</a>, which Starbucks uses to ensure that coffee is grown in a socially and environmentally responsible manner.

Starbucks, working with local government authorities and with the support of the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Science, had just opened its sixth <a href="https://news.starbucks.com/news/starbucks-opens-first-farmer-support-center-in-yunnan-china-strengthening-c">Farmer Support Center</a>, and its first in Asia, to offer coffee growing guidance, soil testing and more to local growers. Come learn, he invited the farmers.

Tong also talked to the farmers about quality standards for Starbucks. There hadn’t been a market leader to show them how to grow better quality coffee, he said. Now there was.

While he was the sole Starbucks agronomist working at the Farmer Support Center that first year (others would be hired in 2013), he envisioned the possible: to work with a group of farmers who would grow the very best coffee in the region.

“I made up my mind, someday, Starbucks will be the benchmark for Yunnan coffee,” he said.&nbsp;

Today, the Pu’er Farmer Support Center has trained nearly 10,000 farmers in sustainable farming practices. And 1,200 farms are now verified through C.A.F.E. Practices.

All of the original group of 25 are still involved and growing Yunnan coffee for Starbucks. While Tong has met thousands of farmers, that core group is especially meaningful, he said. He knows their families and their stories. He runs into them at the grocery store.

Tong, who describes himself as a city boy, having been born in Tianjin, near Beijing, now calls Pu’er home. He knew he needed to live with the farmers to gain their trust. Along the way, the area became his passion. The farmers aren’t just his suppliers and partners, they are his neighbors and friends. That’s one reason he’s committed to helping them be successful.

Before the Farmer Support Center, coffee grown in Yunnan could sometimes have uneven quality, he said. And if farmers couldn’t sell it, they suffered financially, some living in impoverished conditions.

“I realized this is more than a job. I realized I need to do something to help them,” he said. “One of the worst things is not knowing what you want and living with no clear objective.&nbsp; I tell them, ‘know what you want.’ I know what I want: a good coffee. If they want that too, then we are connected by coffee.”

Jeff Miller, vice president for coffee and partner engagement in China and Asia Pacific for Starbucks, has called China home for nearly two decades. “China has always been a part of me,” he said. “I fell in love with the people and the culture from the first time I lived here.”

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In his then-role as operations consultant, he was part of opening the first Starbucks in Shanghai in 2000. Now there are nearly 600 in Shanghai, more stores than in any other city in the world.

“One thing I love about China is that anything is possible,” he said.

He’s seen that come to life with the Yunnan coffee growers since the Farmer Support Center opened, something he credits Tong and his team with.

“I admire what he and his team have been able to achieve in such a short amount of time,” he said. “The relationships they’ve established with the farmers in Yunnan and the collaborative partnerships embody the vision behind the Farmer Support Centers.&nbsp;His outgoing personality and demonstration of results have contributed considerably to the way he’s built trust and the reputation of Starbucks in the local community.”

Whenever Miller visits Pu’er and walks among the coffee trees, he has a tradition: He plucks a red coffee cherry off a tree, pops it into his mouth and savors the sweet, fruity flavor. Like Tong, coffee is deeply personal for him.

It starts with that bean and ends with seeing a Starbucks customer cup, something Miller and many at Starbucks call “the first 10 feet and the last 10 feet” in coffee’s journey.

But, while he sees that whole arc, he knows that many who grow coffee don’t get a chance to. So, recently, he and Tong set out to change that. They held a coffee tasting for 4,000 Yunnan coffee growers, largest Starbucks tasting ever in China, he said.

“We wanted them to understand … how much care and love we take with their product,” Miller said. “We felt such pride in serving them their coffee.”

Tong said as he watched the tasting, remembering the 25 farmers he started with, now grown into thousands, his feeling of pride was too big and complicated to contain in words. Those who were once strangers are now trusted friends, creating a top-quality product shared with all of China.

He still has bigger goals though – for the coffee and those who grow it.

“My goal is that our coffee will keep getting better and better and that in (a few years) the world will recognize its consistent quality,” he said. “Time matters and persistence matters. I do feel responsibility on my shoulders. There is no way to let (the farmers) down.”

Marianne Duong contributed to this report.

Five years after he started the first Starbucks Farmer Support Center in Asia, Alan Tong talks about Yunnan Single Origin coffee’s journey from bean to barista.

Yunnan coffee is culmination of years of partnership

‘More than a cup’: Yunnan coffee is culmination of years of partnership

https://stories.starbucks.com/asia/stories/2017/yunnan-single-origin-coffee/

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In Indonesia, in North Sumatra, where the temperature routinely hovers in the 70s and low 80s, the rain falls reliably and the half-days of sun bake the earth at the 4,000-foot-plus elevation, Wahana Estate occupies a sweet spot for coffee cultivation: coffee cherries, the deep red fruit that clusters along the branches of coffee trees, are harvested year-round.

The beans are so distinctive that many of them are funneled into the Starbucks Reserve program, the company’s premium coffee line. But just because coffee-growing conditions are favorable today doesn’t mean that will always be the case or that farmers are necessarily experts in growing coffee either sustainably or ethically. That’s where Starbucks steps in, laying out guidelines for growing, processing, quality and sourcing that ensure each cup meets Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices.

Developed in collaboration with Conservation International, a nonprofit committed to environmental protection, C.A.F.E. Practices launched in 2004 as a comprehensive set of social, economic, environmental and quality guidelines that dictate how coffee should be ethically sourced. The guidelines help Starbucks evaluate supply chains — which can consist of hundreds or even thousands of farmers — to determine which ones produce the highest quality and most socially and environmentally responsible coffee. A network of third parties independently evaluates performance.

“C.A.F.E. Practices is, we believe, the right way to grow coffee,” said Kelly Goodejohn, director for Starbucks ethical sourcing programs. “Ultimately for the consumer, this translates into the finest cup of coffee that also supports farmers.”

About 125 million people earn their livelihood by growing or trading coffee. In 2016, Starbucks purchased more than 600 million pounds of green Arabica coffee, 99% of which obtained the C.A.F.E. practices seal of approval.

Among them are beans from Wahana Estate, which was started by Dianto Gho’s parents in 2005. Wahana’s 175 farmers grow sweet potatoes, green beans and radishes, but more than half of the 1,126 acres are devoted to coffee. Gho, who as the farm’s sales director manages Wahana’s sustainability program, says that C.A.F.E. Practices standards are rigorous but worthwhile. “C.A.F.E. Practices are a lot of work, but they improve quality and help farmers be better at what they do,” said Gho, who implements the guidelines at Wahana and welcomes external groups of farmers to the estate, where they learn about the verification process and sustainable farming.

Social, economic and environmental responsibility are the pillars

The C.A.F.E. Practices checklist is extensive, covering three main areas: People, Planet and Product.

Farm workers are the focus of the first category, which examines wages, benefits, medical care, education for resident and migrant workers’ children and living conditions to make sure they conform with national laws and international conventions. There is a zero tolerance policy for child labor, for example.

Environmental concerns such as soil care and deforestation, water use and conservation, energy, wildlife preservation and agrochemical use falls under the Planet division.

And Product emphasizes both “cup quality” — &nbsp;essentially taste — and the economics of coffee-growing to make sure that farmers are being paid fairly.

While there are various other socially responsible designations for coffee growers, C.A.F.E. Practices is a comprehensive program that not only sets minimum expectations of its suppliers but promotes continuous improvement through best practices in sustainable coffee production. The program also enables Starbucks to gain insight into the challenges faced by farmers in different coffee-producing regions. That enables Starbucks to customize its support for farmers, whether that means financial assistance from the Global Farmer Fund through a loan, providing healthy coffee trees or technical support through a Farmer Support Center. In turn, that fine-tuning results in enhanced coffee yields. “We expect supply chains to continue to improve over time, and we offer the support and tools for them to do so,” said Goodejohn.

Farmer Support Centers (FSC) are one of the key ways that Starbucks encourages continuous improvement and production of high-quality coffee, even for those farmers who are not yet C.A.F.E. Practices-verified.

That was the experience of Aime Gahizi, who co-owns Gitesi Farm in the western Karongi district of Rwanda with his father. Gahizi was the first farmer to knock on the door of Starbucks Farmer Support Center in Rwanda when it opened in 2009. His father had taken over the farm after his extended family was killed during the 1994 genocide against the minority Tutsi.

Gahizi’s aunt was the only survivor. Before her death several years after the genocide, she beseeched Alex Gahizi, Aime’s father, to stay put. “This is home,” she said of their ancestral land, with its verdant rolling hills and terraced slopes.

But neither Gahizi, 37, nor his father knew much about growing coffee. They had purchased a small washing station to process their coffee cherries, which contain the coffee beans, but they didn’t know how to properly operate the machinery. They ended up breaking the inner beans instead of just removing the parchment, or outer skin.

“We worked with him to teach him farm best practices and increase&nbsp;productivity and quality control,” said Julianne Kayonga, regional manager of the FSC in Rwanda. “We showed him that quality begins on the farm.”

For eight years, the specialists at the FSC worked with Gahizi as he pursued C.A.F.E. Practices status, which he recently attained. He learned how to protect his 15,000 coffee trees from disease and how to properly handle wastewater from coffee production, as well as how to deploy worms that Starbucks provided to make fertilizer using the byproducts from processing the coffee instead of relying on chemicals. “We have learned how to treat our coffee better,” said Gahizi. “Now we are competitive in the market.”

That’s the goal, said Goodejohn. “We’re willing to invest the time to support farmers who want to learn and become better at growing coffee,” she said. “At Starbucks, it’s one of our core missions and values to support producers growing coffee in the most sustainable way. As a business, we are growing. We continue to look for the highest quality coffee grown in the most sustainable way. We can’t assume it’s going to be there tomorrow, so we make the investment today.”

Getting the C.A.F.E. Practices green light is a lengthy process; quality and transparency are the initial two criteria. A supply chain that wants to sell to Starbucks starts by sending a coffee sample to a discerning “tasting team” in Switzerland. Supply chains whose coffee meets quality standards must provide extensive documentation and receipts showing how the price Starbucks pays gets to the farmer. And they have to meet the “People and Planet” social and environmental expectations.

Third-party inspection agencies, overseen by SCS Global Services, conduct the C.A.F.E. Practices audits of supply chains seeking approval under the program, visiting a proportion of the farms within a particular supply chain. Inspectors are paid to be picky: Are water sources being protected? Is there adequate biodiversity? Are pest management methods appropriate?

Inspectors interview workers, asking how much and how often they’re paid and what their living quarters look like. At coffee mills, inspectors make sure that water used to wash and depulp cherries is treated before being released back into the environment.

All this data and more is fed into a computer program, which generates a report and score that determines whether C.A.F.E. Practices status is awarded. Verification is not a one-time deal; supply chains must go through the process every one to four years, depending upon how high they score each time.

The copious amounts of data are also used to guide Starbucks' support efforts. In Mexico, for example, reports revealed low yields. Trees were not producing as many cherries as expected, so Starbucks established a Farmer Support Center to assist with technical training and donated millions of coffee trees to producers who were impacted by the recent Coffee Leaf Rust (Roja) fungus outbreak. &nbsp;In Indonesia, the Starbucks Foundation is supporting the building of clean water systems — 50 to date — so women and girls in coffee farming communities don’t need to walk miles for water.

And in North Sumatra, Farmer Support Center agronomists work with smallholder farmers to improve coffee yields through soil sampling and application of fertilizer, as well as continuous training on pruning and renovation.

Throughout, Starbucks gets support from Conservation International (CI) to ensure that it’s addressing a broad range of concerns. Starbucks might seek CI’s input about trends in shade canopy — maintaining shade trees in coffee fields. Or it might ask in which regions CI is seeing deforestation.

“C.A.F.E. Practices started from a social mindset, and it moved from there to incorporate sustainability goals,” said Bambi Semroc, who oversees corporate partnerships for CI’s global coffee programs. “Starbucks was progressive in terms of taking the standards and principles of sustainability and turning that into principles for good practices.”

National Coffee Day, celebrated Sept. 29, offers Starbucks an opportunity to highlight the importance of ethically-sourced coffee.

Sustainability is at the heart of Starbucks coffee sourcing

https://stories.starbucks.com/asia/stories/2017/sustainability-is-at-the-heart-of-starbucks-coffee-sourcing/

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There are 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the Member States of the United Nations. These goals outline ways to end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and protect the planet. Starbucks 2016 Global Social Impact Goals map directly to the SDGs, demonstrating the company’s leadership position and dedication to this effort.

Starbucks 2016 Global Social Impact Goals map directly to the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the Member States of the United Nations.

Starbucks 2016 Global Social Impact Goals

Starbucks 2016 Global Social Impact Goals Mapped to UN Sustainable Development Goals

https://stories.starbucks.com/asia/stories/2017/starbucks-2016-global-social-impact-goals-mapped-to-un-sdgs/

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By Bonnie Rochman/Starbucks Newsroom

There are more than 30,000 Starbucks partners in Japan. On Saturday, those crafting lattes and blending up Frappuccino beverages will be wearing whimsical eyeglasses in the shape of “99.” Haruka Kitamori, manager of the Tokyo midtown store, fervently hopes that customers will ask why. To leave little to chance, partners will also write “99” on customers’ coffee cups. Surely, she believes, the coffee-cravers will want to know what’s going on.

If customers indulge their curiosity and inquire about the reason for the glasses, baristas will explain that 99 percent of Starbucks coffee is ethically sourced, ensuring that farmers are paid fair wages and that coffee beans are cultivated according to environmentally friendly methods. Saturday’s date — September 9, or 9/9 — is a well-timed opportunity to cleverly get the message out.

“We are so excited to wear these glasses,” said Kitamori, a 15-year partner. “The partners think it’s great fun.”

Japan first celebrated 9/9 in 2015, after brainstorming for creative ways to share Starbucks’ ethical sourcing story to customers. “We were wondering how to communicate to the Japanese customer what we have accomplished,” said Norio Adachi, social impact director for Japan. “The origin story is very far away from Japan. So we tried to convey this information in a unique way.”

In addition to the silliness in stores, Japanese locations will be highlighting single-origin Guatemala Antigua coffee, with its lemon, chocolate and spice notes infused from nutrient-rich volcanic soil.

Those customers that show a special interest in learning more about sustainability can take an “ethical coffee sourcing quiz” that tests them on their knowledge of coffee and how it’s produced. Japanese stores also host small seminars for inquisitive coffee-drinkers who want to find out more in which they learn about Starbucks commitment to strive for 100 percent ethically sourced coffee. The company’s ethical sourcing guidelines, called C.A.F.E. Practices, short for Coffee and Farmer Equity, were developed in 2004 in conjunction with Conservation International, a nonprofit committed to environmental protection. C.A.F.E. Practices lay out economic, social, quality and environmental standards that all Starbucks coffee farmers and suppliers must meet via a third-party verification system. Achieving 100 percent ethical sourcing can be challenging because coffee procurement, from bean to cup, relies on a complex supply chain and farms in remote areas that may not emphasize environmental or social considerations.

“We’re not only celebrating what we’ve been working so long to achieve, but we’re also celebrating that interaction between a customer and a barista,” said Kelly Goodejohn, director for Starbucks ethical sourcing programs. “We’re sharing this aspect of our coffee heritage with our customers, which is something we don’t do that often. Fun events like this allow us to have great conversations with our customers, including about our efforts to reach the last 1 percent.”

Japan’s 9/9 celebrations are independent of any central coordinating team; those countries that want to participate simply opt in. This year, stores in Britain, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Greece, Cyprus, Portugal and South Africa are joining by writing “99” on customers’ cups.

In London, on the outside of a centrally located Soho store, store manager Becca Turner is creating a chalk art mural, a drawing that depicts farmers and C.A.F.E. Practices guidelines. Turner, who has an art degree, has also designed an image that she’s inked on reusable cups, of the number “99” superimposed on a coffee tree. “I’m hoping it will inspire some discussion,” said Turner, a seven-year partner. “I want it to be a prompt for conversations happening around the coffee.”

Major Cohen, a 22-year partner and coffee ambassador for the China-Asia-Pacific region, has been involved in the 99 percent festivities since their inception. Cohen traveled to Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, where he coached hundreds of partners to share the story of how Starbucks coffee is ethically sourced. “I tell people that the way to begin is: ‘Since 1971, we have been buying coffee the right way.’ That is enough for many customers,” said Cohen. “But if a customer says what does that mean, I tell them … (Starbucks) realized we needed to protect our supply of coffee by looking for a sustainable product supply.”

In practice, that’s more information than most customers crave. So Cohen advises partners to “pick whatever is most meaningful to you — the story of a farmer or the story of a social project. Be ready to tell that story because it will come from your heart.”

Through Starbucks commitment to ethically-sourced coffee, farmers are paid fair wages and coffee beans are cultivated according to environmentally friendly methods.

Starbucks celebrates its 99 percent ethically-sourced coffee

Starbucks stores in Japan and Europe celebrate 99 percent ethically-sourced coffee

https://stories.starbucks.com/asia/stories/2017/starbucks-99-percent-ethically-sourced-coffee/

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Sustainability bond issuance follows company’s first U.S. Corporate Sustainability Bond in 2016 as part of its ongoing commitment to sustainably sourced coffee

TOKYO &amp; SEATTLE, March 17, 2017 – Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX) today announced that it has closed an underwritten public offering of senior notes, comprising the first global yen-denominated Corporate Sustainability Bond issued in the Japanese market. The company will use the net proceeds from the offering of 85 billion Japanese Yen in 0.372% Senior Notes due 2024 to enhance its sustainability programs around coffee supply chain management through Eligible Sustainability Projects. This includes coffee purchases from suppliers verified by a third-party as complying with Starbucks ethical sourcing verification program of Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices, the development and operation of farmer support centers in coffee growing regions, as well as new and financed loans made through Starbucks Global Farmer Fund.

“Coffee is our core and we are committed to supporting the sustainability of the specialty coffee industry for future generations through the issuance of our second sustainability bond.,” said Scott Maw, chief financial officer, Starbucks. “We are pleased to be able to close our first foreign-denominated bond issuance in Japan, a significant and strategically important global market for Starbucks, which is renowned for its socially conscious consumers and investors who have fully embraced the Starbucks brand. Japan was our first international market outside of North America and has continued to grow and scale over the past 20 years to now more than 1,200 stores across all 47 prefectures.”

Each year, Starbucks invests significantly in its comprehensive approach to ethically source its coffee. This includes providing support to coffee farming communities, helping mitigate the impact of climate change, and reinforcing long-term crop stability and farm sustainability. This work has contributed to the planting of 22 million rust-resistant coffee trees in Latin America to-date. Starbucks operates a network of nine farmer support centers around the world (Rwanda, Tanzania, Colombia, China, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Guatemala, Ethiopia and Mexico), and has a commitment to provide $50 million in farmer financing in the form of new and financed loans. In 2013, Starbucks also purchased a working coffee farm in Costa Rica which acts as a global research and development center. All of this is grounded in the company’s open sourced C.A.F.E. Practices developed with Conservation International over 15 years ago. This rigorous set of best practices helps to ensure that the methods used in growing and processing coffee are efficient, effective and sustainable, both environmentally and socially. In 2015, 99% of Starbucks 551 million pounds of green coffee purchased were verified as ethically sourced and Starbucks became a founding member of the Sustainable Coffee Challenge - an industry coalition with a call to action to make coffee the first sustainable agricultural product in the world.

Sustainalytics, a leading global provider of environmental, social and governance (ESG) research and ratings, delivered the second opinion for the Sustainability Bond. This independent review offers investors additional insight into the proposed projects to be funded by the bond, as well as the expected positive environmental and social impacts of these projects. Sustainalytics also rates Starbucks as an ESG leader in both overall and relative performance to its peers.

"Starbucks efforts to improve sustainable agricultural practices and socioeconomic conditions of coffee farmers underscore its ongoing commitment to sustainable coffee production,” said Alexander Rengers, executive director of Advisory Services at Sustainalytics. “We are honored to work with Starbucks on their Sustainability Bond and look forward to seeing the impact of their bond.”

Starbucks offered the first U.S. Corporate Sustainability Bond in May 2016. The issuance marked the first time a U.S. Corporation offered a Sustainability bond focused on educational and sustainable agricultural initiatives to further diversify the company’s investor base. The high interest and success of the initial issuance was a catalyst for the company’s first foreign denominated issuance of a Sustainability bond.

Starbucks will publish annual updates of the allocation of the proceeds throughout the term of the sustainability bond until the proceeds have been fully allocated to projects meeting the eligibility criteria. These updates will be reported publicly on the Starbucks website at www.starbucks.com and may include additional descriptions of select projects funded with sustainability bond proceeds, and, where possible, their environmental and/or social impacts. 

Certain statements contained in this release are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of applicable securities laws and regulations, including statements about the expected closing of a public offering or senior notes and the use of proceeds of such offering. Such forward-looking statements are based on current management expectations and satisfactions of certain conditions that are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including market conditions and those risks detailed in the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the “Risk Factors” section of the Starbucks Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 2, 2016, and the prospectus and prospectus supplement delivered in connection with the public offering of senior notes discussed in this release. The company assumes no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements. 

Starbucks announced that it has closed an underwritten public offering of senior notes, comprising the first global yen-denominated Corporate Sustainability Bond issued in the Japanese market.

Starbucks Issues First Global Sustainability Bond in Japan

Starbucks Issues First Global Yen Sustainability Bond in Japan

https://stories.starbucks.com/asia/stories/2017/starbucks-offers-its-first-sustainability-bond-in-japan/

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Sustainability is at the heart of Starbucks coffee sourcing

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Starbucks stores in Japan and Europe celebrate 99 percent ethically-sourced coffee

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