I Asked Starbucks About Its War on Straws. Their Answer Was... Revealing.
The best time to question the sustainability narrative was years ago. The second-best time is now.
Life is full of moments in life where we realize: I’ve always assumed that was true — but is it?
Asking a simple question about the structure of a business can be the difference between investing in a successful start-up and sinking thousands into a scam. Asking a simple question about the details of a story you’ve been told can reveal a web of dishonesty. It’s an unfortunate reality that many dysfunctional systems, from the scam to the cult to the Ponzi scheme, operate on premises that were never true, but that people just assumed to be so.
Several weeks ago, we asked Starbucks, at its annual meeting, whether this shift away from straws actually created value for shareholders. Their response? “We have not disclosed the financial impact of strawless lids.”
The fundamental question we were asking was about the sustainability assumption: that you can go green and make green at the same time. That you can save the planet by recycling more, while not affecting your shareholder return. And now, one of the biggest brands in the world is making it clear:
We won’t even tell our own shareholders whether the sustainability assumption is true. Go away.
As it happens, that’s an industry-wide problem. The narrative on plastic use is ingrained deep within the corporate psyche. 72% of the top 300 companies in the world have made commitments to reduce plastic use, with many setting specific targets for reducing plastic waste in their production chains. From tech giants like Google to food producers like Mars Inc, recyclable/reusable plastic is an issue that the world’s largest companies are hell-bent on opining on and making commitments to “fix.” But are their solutions working — even by their own standards?
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