Starbucks Behind The Veil

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Starbucks Behind the Veil In 2008 there were reports that Starbucks was wasting millions of water in the United Kingdom each day. This was due to the companies’ policy of keeping faucet taps running non-stop at thousands of stores around the world. The Sun estimated that Starbucks wasted 6.2 million gallons of water daily and the staff was instructed not to turn off the water in order to keep germs from breeding inside the taps. In my opinion that does not make any sense. I could see I there were scientific facts or data that would confirm that statement to be true and that by running the water it prevented germs but nothing has been issued to the media outlets such as the TV news stations with this type of comment to my knowledge. If this was so all companies in the fast food industry, hospitality and more would have adopted that way of preventing germs. Starbucks defended themselves by saying, the running taps were needed to meet health standards. I would say they were just wasting water and had not clear understanding of what the consequences would be once the news got out into the public. This is very unfortunate when most countries in Africa do not have clean running water and here Starbucks is washing it down the drain without thought. After being under fire for this incident Starbucks soon ordered the taps to be turned off. They did not want to risk any additional negative publicity about the company along with the information getting back to its stakeholders and consumers The U.K. public relations agency tried to warn Starbucks of doing such a thing and that the incident would threaten the companies’ ethical position, PR week reported. This is a very common way of hiding the truth when it comes to these big companies such as Starbucks. They hide the truth when it could really damage their image and the company can potential lose billions of customers.

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