Starbucks' credentials as an environmental champion have gone down the drain after it was revealed that the company was leaving taps behind its counters running all day, wasting millions of tons of water.
The coffee shop empire got caught with its trousers down following a complaint to head office from a Hertfordshire couple, who noticed that staff left a tap running non-stop at their local Starbucks outlet.
The company responded to the complaint, explaining that the taps, or dipper wells, were used to clean utensils and that employees were not allowed to turn them off because of health and safety reasons.
Starbucks also admitted that it enforced the policy across its entire worldwide network of 10,000 coffee shops, which means the chain wastes around 23.4 million litres of water a day.
The media then picked up on the story, as environmental experts and water chiefs waded in by slamming the policy as wasteful and damaging to the environment.
The revelation leaves Starbucks' CSR programme in tatters, especially as the company has failed to respond satisfactorily to the public outcry, saying little more than it was reviewing its policy.
The PR calamity highlights the importance of getting good crisis management measures in place, so that a company is adequately prepared to deal with negative situations and minimise any damage where possible.
As soon as head office responded to the letter of complaint, it should've been alerted to the potential negative publicity and acted more quickly to counter the media onslaught.
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