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Starbucks to move water business out of California

May 8, 2015

water2A week after media reported that Starbucks was running a bottled water business out of drought-stricken areas of California, the coffee giant announced it is moving the sourcing and production of Ethos Water to Pennsylvania. [LA Times]

The Starbucks subsidiary had been pulling water from private springs in Central California’s Placer County and was operating a factory south of there in Merced. The U.S. Drought Monitor ranks both locations as currently being in the “exceptional drought” category.

Starbucks executives say the move will take six months to complete. Ethos Water already has a supplier in Pennsylvania.

“The decision to move our Ethos Water sourcing from California and reduce our in-store water reductions by more than 25 percent are steps we are taking in partnership with state and local government to accelerate water conservation,” said John Kelly, Starbucks senior vice president of global responsibility and public policy.

Ethos Water was founded in 2002 with a promise to help battle global water issues, particularly in the developing world. Starbucks purchased the company in 2005 and now donates 5 cents to the Ethos Water Fund for every $1.95 bottle sold.

Companies like Nestle, Safeway and Arrowhead Spring Water are still drawing California groundwater to ship to other states.

 


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How about prohibiting the export of all our beer, se we can drink beer instead of water.


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What about all the manufacturers that use water and leave it in the container, such as canned foods? Should they be scorned for exporting water?


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My voter registration is “Decline to State”. As long as one defines the enemy as “liberalism” or “conservatives”, the enemy has won. What is left of our ground water is, in many places, being fracked and the resulting product shipped to foriegn countries. The waste water, loaded with extremely dangerous chemicals and completely unmonitored, is being shipped to big ag to water our crops. This is not a conservtive or liberal plot, but a corporate money situation.


And yes, fracking is dangerous to water supplis that lie above the operation for the very reason that drilling penetrates and “fractures” the layers in between and causes migration of fluids. Highly toxic substances are then injected. This is why peoples’ tap water is becoming flamable. It also causes earthquakes, which further disperse the chemical throughout the layers. Oklahoma used to have almost no quakes and now they have up to 10 per day.


We need conservation, gray water systems, bottle water elsewhere, not in a county with a water problem, curb developement, and any other measures that we can devise to make the most of what we still have. And Yes, protect the environment. If that does not matter to you, perhaps you should move to Orange County.


Did you know that we used to have beavers in most of the state? They were tremendously beneficial to the watersheds and created excellent wildlife habitats. Our government, in a move to promote “business” had them removed in the ’60’s. This has greatly added to the escallation of desertification of the state, by degrading the ability of watersheds to retain water and by then affecting climate by promoting a drier atmosphere in areas that might otherwise have had rain. I personally would like a tee shirt that says “BEAVERS DO IT FOR FREE’ with a pic of a beaver and a dam in the background. With very little management cost, these guys could help to bring back some of what we are losing rapidly at present.


We need to work together, not point fingers in this “my team against your team” mentality. I think that game of ttempting to invalidate another persons’ opinion by name calling shows a lack of facts on the part of a person with a losing arguement, which is really lame. and leaves us volunerable to the real culprits.


The origin of the term “conservative” came from the word CONSERVATION. They were into conserving our resources, military forces, civil rights, financial regulations and Theodore Roosevelt (a republican) worked hard for minimum wage, universl health care, and established the National Parks system, begining with Yosemite. Let’s get back to that mentality. Taking care of each other and the country in which we live. BEING ENEMIES IS NOT WORKING FOR US.


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In California it’s important to remember that no good deed goes unpunished.


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The average American consumes ~32 gallons of bottled water / year (http://www.bottledwater.org/us-consumption-bottled-water-shows-continued-growth-increasing-62-percent-2012-sales-67-percent)

Is this really what we should focus on? One shower?


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Loss of jobs will have more impact than the water used.


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It is not just the amount of water in the bottle, but the manufacture and disposal of the bottle itself. On a further note, I live in Cambria, where water has been rationed for some time now and I can attest that hardly anyone is using more than 10 gals. of water to shower. I recycle it by standing in a plastic storage container and then using the water to flush the toilet. You do not need drinking water to flush. If you think this is silly, you need to talk to the people in the towns with dry wells.


A company that is touting their business plan to help countries with water problems is laudable, but they are doing the right thing to pay attention to where their water comes from.


Get a recycleable bottle to use for drinking water. We have created a dead zone in the ocean 3,000 miles square (!!!) of plastic trash that kills sea life. A “can’t see it from my house” or “the ocean is so big what does it matter” attitude is pretty lame at this point.


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Corporate politicking. Now the whiners can bitch about all the diesel to haul bottled water from Pennsylvania to a Starbucks near you.


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Wow. I think you win the award for the most idiotic statement of the week. Whether the water is shipped from California to Pennsylvania or Pennsylvania to California, the amount of diesel used to haul the water is the same. It’s not like Ethos has a local water source in every state.


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¿Any more idiotic than the ideologues who are whimpering about Starbucks’ use of 1-millionth of a percent of “California’s” water?


Didn’t think so.


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Using water to hydrate people is always 100% it’s highest and best use, and that use knows no state lines.


By policy, we seem to think the second most important use is to ease people’s lives by whisking their shit away, and keeping their yards green and inviting.


Our third most important use falls under the heading “environmental,” meaning mainly fish.


Our fourth important use is growing things to feed people.


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This is how Liberalism works, symbolism over substance? How about the daily symbolism from Hannity & Limbaugh and their ilk? Either of them choosing whom to label a “great patriot” makes me sick.

I’m not saying the Dems don’t do the same thing, I’m just saying they ALL do the same thing regardless of party affiliation. And how do they get away with it, the absolute ignorance of the average American voter.


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Some of those “ignorant” voters are not ignorant through lack of information but through belief in misinformation. Propoganda Works!


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So how did a conversation about a corporation deciding to quite draining drought-ridden California’s water supply turn into a conversation about Liberalism and Hannity & Limbaugh? Oh, I get it…MERIKA!


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More jobs down the drain.


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Good pun.


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Are Californians and the execs stupid enough to think that this really matters?

The amount of water we are talking about here is a fraction of what’s wasted by folks leaving the water running when brushing their teeth.

This is emblematic of how Liberalism works…symbolism over substance….we feel better but do NOTHING to actually solve the problem.


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Your comment would get a thumbs up from me except for your attempt to blame the issue on “Liberalism.”


This is typical of society as a whole and, along with an even more insidious tendency to not think about long-term consequences, is responsible for a lot of our problems.


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To know the enemy is to defeat the enemy.


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