Each year since 2001, Starbucks has reported on its efforts to make a positive impact in the communities it serves. Starbucks ceo Kevin Johnson reflects on our progress and shares the company’s results for the 2019 fiscal year.

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Dear Starbucks partners, customers and stakeholders:

As we provide our 19th annual update on our global social impact activity, we also sit at a significant time in history that’s requiring major changes to our business around the world as <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2020/navigating-through-covid-19/">quickly and dynamically</a> as possible to meet the needs of our partners, customers and communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Starbucks partners are showing how resilient they are in ways no one dreamed about a year ago. They’re upping the ante every day on what our company represents: Using the ritual of connecting over coffee to uplift the everyday experience and drive deeper human connection.&nbsp;

Each one of us at Starbucks is forever changed from this pandemic, as are the communities we serve. It has underscored how important serving our customers and communities is to us, and it’s brought new perspective and resonance to the ability Starbucks has to make the world a better place. This time is historic in an additional way, as many of our communities are coming together to protest racial injustice and highlight the vast improvement necessary in the way society treats people of color. Clearly, current events are showing us that executing our global social impact agenda successfully is now more important than ever.

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Decades ago, Starbucks developed an agenda of global social impact priorities. In broad strokes, our investments have centered around balancing our role as a for-profit company with the betterment of people and the planet.

That means we invest in people – especially our partners, so they in turn can support people in the communities we serve. It also means we recognize healthy human lives depend on healthy ecosystems, so we work to better the health of our natural resources. As a result, we now have a long-term aspiration to be a resource positive company – storing more carbon than we emit, providing more clean freshwater than we use, and eliminating waste.

We can be proud of our Global Social Impact progress in fiscal year 2019. We continued working to put partners first and create a culture where everyone is welcome, including conducting a first-time, third-party <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2019/update-on-starbucks-ongoing-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-efforts/">Civil Rights Assessment</a> that we continue to consider and implement. We worked to strengthen the communities where Starbucks partners live and work, expanding innovative grants, investments and community service models.

We also invested in the future of greener cups, packaging and retail, foreshadowing a much <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2020/starbucks-announces-multi-decade-aspiration-to-become-resource-positive/">larger aspiration</a> we announced in January 2020. We invested heavily in supporting coffee communities, including dispersing a $20 million <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/press/2018/starbucks-commits-20-million-for-emergency-relief-to-farmers/">Emergency Farmer Relief Fund</a>&nbsp;to support smallholder farmers in Central America experiencing the effects of low global coffee prices.&nbsp;

As a testament to our increasing commitment to our people and planet priorities, we were proud late last year to hire our first global chief officer of sustainability, Michael Kobori; our first global chief officer of inclusion and diversity, Nzinga Shaw; and our first global chief officer of ethics and compliance, Tyson Avery.&nbsp;

Now in mid-2020, the world has changed, the needs are even greater, and we continue to thoughtfully examine how Starbucks can most responsibly and constructively serve our communities and our planet going forward.&nbsp;

The crisis we are navigating has underscored that our world is small, and we need to take care of it and each other. We understand the interdependency of the health of humanity and the health of the planet. We embrace diverse voices participating in these conversations, so we can hear varying points of view to make the best decisions. We feel the threat of greater economic disparity in the future, as COVID-19 is often impacting socioeconomically disadvantaged communities more than others.

From the onset of the pandemic, we have moved swiftly to take actions to address our people and planet priorities. We’ve acted to address urgent needs related to COVID-19 as detailed and updated <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/press/2020/what-customers-need-to-know-about-starbucks-response-to-covid-19/">here</a>. As an example, Starbucks has committed to a first-of-its-kind <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/press/2020/starbucks-commits-10m-usd-in-covid-19-relief-for-partners-around-the-world/">$10 million emergency relief fund</a> for partners in both company-operated and licensed retail store markets around the world.&nbsp;

In the U.S. and Canada, we were able to provide <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2020/our-continued-support-of-u-s-partners-during-covid-19/">temporary benefits</a> for partners, more support for <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2020/as-food-bank-need-spikes-starbucks-and-feeding-america-fight-hunger-together/">food banks</a> and <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2020/starbucks-gives-1million-cups-of-free-coffee-to-first-responders-in-us-and-canada/">free coffee</a> for first responders and frontline healthcare workers. Starbucks partners are <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/good-things-are-happening/">innovating</a> in other timely, locally meaningful ways. Our <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/asia/stories/2020/starbucks-partners-offer-support-to-frontline-workers-across-asia/">partners in Asia</a> have led the way in organizing food and coffee donations to hospitals, nonprofits, local police and health officials, and other frontline workers. And our partners around the world have echoed those demonstrations of gratitude.

During the pandemic, we’ve had to pause on allowing reusable cups. But we continue our commitment to shift to more reusable packaging as well as more fully recyclable and compostable packaging, ensuring we also prioritize health and safety. This requires innovation from our own experts as well as many other alliances.

Meanwhile, <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/press/2020/the-starbucks-foundation-donates-more-than-3m-to-global-covid-19-relief-efforts/">The Starbucks Foundation</a> continues to invest millions of dollars to support a variety of organizations, extending emergency assistance to those in need while also helping to build a path towards recovery and resilience.

Making a positive social impact runs deep at Starbucks. Since the beginning, our purpose has gone beyond profit. We believe in the pursuit of doing good. The idea of Starbucks being a Third Place for the community to gather means our stores have often served not only as a place for human connection, where everyone can feel welcome, but also as a <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/?s=disaster relief">beacon of hope and resilience</a> during crisis – whether that’s the aftermath of an earthquake, hurricane or a wildfire, or now as we re-open and strive to provide some normalcy in the midst of the global pandemic.

As always, Starbucks partners are the best champions of how to serve their own communities. We’re finding success when we gain insights from the field, provide resources and tools to help inform local decisions, and enable partners to take actions that are locally relevant. Just as this approach applies to navigating the day-to-day COVID-19 situation as it varies in markets around the world, it also applies to defining relevant community service activities and guiding The Starbucks Foundation’s approach to addressing local communities’ needs. And it applies to our teams in our nine Farmer Support Centers in coffee-growing regions worldwide as they serve the needs of coffee farmers and their communities.

Because of our partners’ inspiring daily actions, I’m more optimistic than ever that we can overcome this global challenge and emerge with deeper perspective about the role we should be playing as a for-profit enterprise that also has a great deal of power to make positive global social impact.

As Starbucks approaches its 50th anniversary in 2021, I hold those thoughts in my mind every day – that as we evolve our business in major ways, we must stay true to our heritage and what we stand for: People positive, planet positive and profit positive, working as partners to create a different kind of company for the next 50 years.

Kevin Johnson, Starbucks president and ceo

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A message from Starbucks ceo Kevin Johnson: Our 2019 impact - Starbucks Stories EMEA

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Starbucks Stories EMEA

A message from Starbucks ceo Kevin Johnson: Our 2019 impact

Starbucks ceo Kevin Johnson reflects on our social impact progress and shares the company’s results for the 2019 fiscal year.

https://stories.starbucks.com/emea/stories/2020/a-message-from-starbucks-ceo-kevin-johnson-our-2019-impact/

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Today, Starbucks&nbsp;chief executive officer Kevin Johnson unveiled a multi-decade aspiration to be a resource-positive company,&nbsp;giving more than it takes from the planet. The announcement included science-based preliminary target reductions of carbon, water and waste&nbsp;by 2030, and outlined five strategies the company has identified to move toward them.&nbsp;

A comprehensive, data-driven environmental footprint&nbsp;of&nbsp;carbon emissions, water use and waste in Starbucks global operations and supply chain informed the five strategies to prioritize work: &nbsp;

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The company’s aspiration to become resource positive is grounded in Starbucks mission to inspire and nurture the human spirit, one person, cup and neighborhood at a time.&nbsp;The company will spend the next year continuing to test and learn before formalizing these sustainability targets as part of the company’s 50th&nbsp;anniversary in 2021.&nbsp;

Starbucks announces multi-decade aspiration to become resource positive - Starbucks Stories EMEA

https://stories.starbucks.com/uploads/sites/17/2020/01/SBX20200120-SustainabilityNewsBrief-Feature.jpg

Starbucks announces multi-decade aspiration to become resource positive

The announcement included science-based preliminary target reductions of carbon, water and waste by 2030, and outlined five strategies the company has identified to move toward them.

https://stories.starbucks.com/emea/stories/2020/starbucks-announces-multi-decade-aspiration-to-become-resource-positive/

A Letter to Our Starbucks Partners, Customers and All Stakeholders:

At Starbucks, we live our mission of inspiring and nurturing the human spirit every day through the convening power of coffee.&nbsp;As ceo, I am joined by a leadership team privileged to steward&nbsp;our company into the future, staying true to this enduring&nbsp;mission, sharing success with our partners and leading with environmental consciousness.&nbsp;As we approach the 50th anniversary of&nbsp;Starbucks in 2021, we&nbsp;look ahead with a heightened sense of urgency and&nbsp;conviction&nbsp;that we must challenge ourselves, think bigger and do much more in partnership with others to take care of the planet we share.&nbsp;Today,&nbsp;I’m excited to be able to share with you&nbsp;our commitment&nbsp;to pursue&nbsp;a bold, multi-decade aspiration to become resource positive and give more than we take from the planet. This is an aspiration that we take on, recognizing it will come with challenges and will require transformational change. Like most things that are worthwhile, this will not be easy. It will require all of us to play a role, and so we invite you to join us.

As many of you know, sustainability has been at&nbsp;Starbucks&nbsp;core since the beginning&nbsp;and consistent with our belief that we can build a great business that scales for good. And for many of us, it’s personal. Every day,&nbsp;our partners bring a sense of community and connection to our customers around the world.&nbsp;And every day, partners and customers take pride in our ethical and sustainable sourcing standards for coffee and our longtime support for coffee communities. 

We know that leadership in sustainability takes&nbsp;commitment, investment, innovation, partnership and, yes, time. It took nearly two decades of dedicated effort in partnership with Conservation International to achieve the milestone of sourcing 99% of our coffee ethically through&nbsp;<a href="https://www.starbucks.com/responsibility/community/farmer-support/farmer-loan-programs">C.A.F.E. (Coffee and Farmer Equity)&nbsp;practices</a>. Our environmental footprint research shows that by implementing these standards,&nbsp;we have more than halved what our coffee’s carbon footprint would have been otherwise.

Becoming a leader in <a href="https://www.starbucks.com/responsibility/environment/leed-certified-stores">L.E.E.D.&nbsp;(Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)</a> stores took partnering with experts at the U.S.&nbsp;Green Building&nbsp;Council&nbsp;and a commitment&nbsp;to bring sustainable practices to scale.&nbsp;

Along the way, we have shared&nbsp;with&nbsp;the world&nbsp;what we&nbsp;have&nbsp;learned&nbsp;through open-source agronomy,&nbsp;farmer support centers&nbsp;and&nbsp;industry consortiums.&nbsp;Since 2001,&nbsp;we’ve published an annual&nbsp;<a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2019/2018-starbucks-global-social-impact-report/">Global Social Impact Report</a>&nbsp;– one of the longest-running and transparent reporting commitments of any public company. These annual reports not only highlight our progress but also reinforce our accountability for goals and aspirations which evolve with new information, innovation and&nbsp;important lessons&nbsp;when we fall short. For example, we established reusability and recycling goals in 2008 that&nbsp;were&nbsp;unprecedented for our industry&nbsp;but also largely dependent on radical changes in customer behavior. What we learned was that, absent the same rigorous analysis, partnerships and investments that made us leaders in sustainable coffee and green building, our results underperformed our high expectations and underscored the need for a different approach.

Today,&nbsp;more than ever, the world needs leadership in environmental sustainability.&nbsp;We agree with the consensus of scientific experts who note that without drastic action from everyone – governments, companies and all of us as individuals – adapting to the impact of climate change in the future will be far more difficult and costly, taking a toll on our supply chains, our business, and more importantly, the lives of everyone involved, including coffee farmers, our suppliers, Starbucks partners, customers and every community we serve.&nbsp;

Now, it’s time to create a new, bold, broad aspiration –&nbsp;and it’s work that will require visionary thinking, new ways of working, investment of&nbsp;resources&nbsp;and urgent action. In that sense, I see today as a milestone for our business as we declare our concern about our planet’s future and commit to do more. 

Our&nbsp;aspiration&nbsp;is to become resource positive – storing more carbon than we emit, eliminating waste, and providing&nbsp;more clean freshwater than we use.&nbsp;This aspiration is grounded in Starbucks mission. By embracing&nbsp;a longer-term economic, equitable and&nbsp;planetary&nbsp;value proposition for&nbsp;our company,&nbsp;we&nbsp;will create greater value&nbsp;for all stakeholders.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Recently,&nbsp;we worked&nbsp;with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Quantis to quantify the carbon, waste and water footprint of our operations and supply chain across the globe. This was the first time we had conducted this footprint assessment&nbsp;for all three of those areas,&nbsp;globally.

These benchmarks&nbsp;provided&nbsp;a&nbsp;clear&nbsp;starting point, which&nbsp;led us to define&nbsp;five&nbsp;environmental strategies that will begin to move us&nbsp;toward a resource-positive future:

1.&nbsp;We will expand plant-based options,&nbsp;migrating&nbsp;toward a more environmentally friendly menu.

2.&nbsp;We will shift&nbsp;from single-use&nbsp;to reusable packaging.&nbsp;

3.&nbsp;We will invest in innovative&nbsp;and regenerative&nbsp;agricultural practices, reforestation, forest conservation and water replenishment in our supply chain.

4.&nbsp;We will invest in better ways to manage our waste, both in our stores and in our communities, to ensure more reuse,&nbsp;recycling&nbsp;and elimination of&nbsp;food waste.&nbsp;

5.&nbsp;We will innovate to develop more eco-friendly stores, operations, manufacturing and delivery.

While&nbsp;we’re&nbsp;confident these strategies&nbsp;are&nbsp;directionally&nbsp;right, our&nbsp;eyes&nbsp;are&nbsp;wide open&nbsp;knowing that&nbsp;we do not have all the answers or&nbsp;fully understand&nbsp;all&nbsp;the complexities and potential consequences.&nbsp;We&nbsp;do&nbsp;know&nbsp;that this journey will require&nbsp;new innovations and&nbsp;creative&nbsp;ideas from entrepreneurs, non-profits, our suppliers, our licensees, our partners and our customers.&nbsp;We will&nbsp;also&nbsp;be working in concert with&nbsp;the <a href="https://sciencebasedtargets.org/">Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi)</a> to help track our progress in conjunction with other companies.

As we&nbsp;move forward,&nbsp;we will be transparent in&nbsp;reporting&nbsp;short- and long-term&nbsp;progress against our&nbsp;goals.&nbsp;We’re starting by&nbsp;setting&nbsp;three&nbsp;preliminary targets&nbsp;for 2030 that will be the focus of our research and operational plans over this next year:

On Starbucks 50th&nbsp;anniversary in 2021, we will formalize our 2030 environmental goals based on what we have learned&nbsp;between now and then. Specifically, this year we will conduct comprehensive market research and trials to better understand consumer behavior and incentives to encourage consumer use of reusable containers. Working in collaboration with experts and advocates, this research will help inform aspirational and attainable reusability goals in various markets and globally by next year.&nbsp;&nbsp;

For all of us as stakeholders, I want to reemphasize that the journey we undertake is not only the right one for Starbucks&nbsp;responsibility as a corporate citizen of the world&nbsp;but&nbsp;is&nbsp;also&nbsp;fundamental to our brand relevance and, therefore, our overall business results.&nbsp;As such,&nbsp;we&nbsp;remain committed to our long-term, double-digit EPS growth model and&nbsp;will continue to&nbsp;deliver targeted financial results by&nbsp;prioritizing the right investments across our partners, customers and planet in support of our “Growth at Scale” agenda.

Today is a milestone&nbsp;for our business as we declare our concern for our planet’s future and commit to do more.&nbsp;I invite you to join us.

A message from Starbucks ceo Kevin Johnson: Starbucks new sustainability commitment - Starbucks Stories EMEA

A message from Starbucks ceo Kevin Johnson: Starbucks new sustainability commitment

Starbucks announces preliminary targets of cutting carbon, water and waste 50 percent by 2030 and to ultimately become resource positive.

https://stories.starbucks.com/emea/stories/2020/message-from-starbucks-ceo-kevin-johnson-starbucks-new-sustainability-commitment/