Starbucks was recently discovered the Sun to have been wasting millions of litres of water everyday. The giant coffee chain has a policy of keeping a tap running non-stop in all of its 10,000 outlets worldwide, which wastes approximately 23.4 MILLION litres a day.

According to The Sun: "That would provide enough daily water for the entire two million-strong population of drought-hit Namibia in Africa or fill an Olympic pool every 83 minutes."

The non-stop water goes to what they call a "dipper well" where they leave their utensils to be rinsed using the non-stop flow of water. The flow may not be strong but to leave it running all day long would have the same negative effect on our environment.

Starbucks' claim was this is being done for hygiene reasons. I, personally, don't get why they have to leave it running the whole day when they can just use a similar concept then just rinse the utensils when they have to. It's not like the baristas put the spoons in their mouth and taste every single drink before they serve it. If that's the case then the practice should be that the utensils be washed with soap everytime. But no! All the utensils used are mostly for coffee and their other drinks that are still coffee or milk based and are just used to mix (unless there is something we don't know). This means that cleaning can be done by using a simple faucet that flows like what they use now (to save water) can be used to clean the utensils. It may or may not work, but it should help. What do you think?

Here's a video coverage by the Sun:

Posted in Coffee News, Starbucks by Ed