Photo: Dinkun Chen via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped. This adapted image is also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Starbucks, the world's biggest coffee chain, has today put plant-based food and drink at the top of its plan to cut its environmental footprint, just two weeks after adding oat milk to around 1,300 of its US stores.
In a public letter published on Tuesday, January 21, CEO Kevin Johnson committed the company to becoming 'resource positive', giving back more to the planet than it takes. The first of the five strategies he set out is expanding plant-based options while migrating toward a more environmentally friendly menu. Johnson wrote:
This is an aspiration that we take on, recognizing it will come with challenges and will require transformational change.
Johnson set preliminary targets for 2030, including a 50% reduction in carbon emissions across Starbucks' direct operations and supply chain and a 50% cut in waste sent to landfill from stores and manufacturing. The company says it will formalize the goals in 2021, its 50th anniversary. According to Nation's Restaurant News, the menu shift starts with more plant-based food at breakfast, and the company says it is exploring meat alternatives for its breakfast menu.
The milk is already moving. On January 7 Starbucks added Oatly oat milk at approximately 1,300 locations in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin. That's quite a long way from 2017, when we were celebrating Starbucks finally launching almond milk in the UK.
Why does the menu matter so much to a coffee company? Because what goes into the cup is a big part of the footprint. The Oxford University study led by Joseph Poore, the largest of its kind, found that the impacts of even the lowest-impact animal products typically exceed those of vegetable substitutes. Swapping cow's milk for oat, almond or soy is one of the easiest changes any of us can make, and now the biggest coffee chain on the planet is making it easier still.
This is another example of the plant-based revolution Google predicted. Dairy is in serious decline as plant milks surge, milk consumption has plunged 25%, and a 90-year-old New York dairy ditched dairy for plant milks. Earlier this month the Golden Globes served a 100% plant-based menu.
If you're not vegan yet, switching your milk might be the best and easiest place to start. Make ours an oat latte.