I try. I really do.
Every time I go to Starbucks, I bring in my mug. I am rather militant about Jonny doing the same. He hates my nagging but I know Mamma Terra appreciates it in the end.
We were cruising home on Sunday from a weekend racing in New Jersey. Let me clarify: Jonny raced. I cheered then cheered him up as best I could when he broke his hand on Saturday.
Sunday was spent at the goose-poop riot that is HPCX, put on by the fantastic Rutgers Cycling Team. They even raked the freakin leaves off the course. Now THAT'S hospitality.
On our way home, after giving half our life savings to the NJ Turnpike, we hit up a "tourist center" in search of warm liquid treats. Jonny brought in his mug and I mine.
We queued right up, ordered our drinks, and watched as the barrista took Jonny's mug and filled with coffee. She then took my mug (okay, I bet she hated me anyway, since it said "Darden"), placed it inside a paper latte cup, then wrote my name on the cup.
I was served my latte not only in my mug, but inside of a paper cup inside of my mug.
I was speechless.
I turned around, walked away, and muttered "I'm trying to save the damn planet and you give me a latte in a paper cup INSIDE my mug?"
I think the guy behind me in line was amused, anyway.
Forget how I'm doing my part to screw the planet by driving a car, breathing, eating food grown outside of my yard, utilizing Starbucks' energy-sucking coffee-making process, etc. Let's shelve that for a moment.
How on earth is one of the most environmentally-responsible (?) companies in America allowing its employees ("partners") to serve customers ("guests") like that? Clearly this is a failure of a system. The poor girl at the autoplatz had no idea what to do with a personal mug. She needed to identify my drink. She used the traditional method to do so (writing on the cup). She didn't think that she was negating any benefit I was hoping to achieve.
Some Starbucks' have little stickies that go on your personal mug that identify your drink. Obviously this is as rare here as people who walk with purpose (don't remind me how much I hate the mouth-breathing masses who stroll around autoplatze aimlessly while I'm trying to find the bathroom and stand directly in my way. "Should I get this nut mix, Mabel?" "No. I like the one with the crunchy little sticks" "Where is that?" "I don't know, hold on..." walking directly into me in her lumbering mission to find the sesame sticks. I trip and give her an evil look. She focuses on the extremely vital task of helping her just-as-clueless spouse locate the correct assortment of crunchy and fatty snacks to pad their already-ample midsections before waddle out to their gas-guzzling Suburban and see more of the lovely New Jersey countryside via Turnpike.).
All scathing observations aside, I am writing to Starbucks not to berate the barrista, but to point out the gap in their communication in hopes they will prioritize it somewhere above changing the toilet paper roll in store #295766 in Wenatchee.
Because the earth isn't getting any healthier.
Every time I go to Starbucks, I bring in my mug. I am rather militant about Jonny doing the same. He hates my nagging but I know Mamma Terra appreciates it in the end.
We were cruising home on Sunday from a weekend racing in New Jersey. Let me clarify: Jonny raced. I cheered then cheered him up as best I could when he broke his hand on Saturday.
Sunday was spent at the goose-poop riot that is HPCX, put on by the fantastic Rutgers Cycling Team. They even raked the freakin leaves off the course. Now THAT'S hospitality.
On our way home, after giving half our life savings to the NJ Turnpike, we hit up a "tourist center" in search of warm liquid treats. Jonny brought in his mug and I mine.
We queued right up, ordered our drinks, and watched as the barrista took Jonny's mug and filled with coffee. She then took my mug (okay, I bet she hated me anyway, since it said "Darden"), placed it inside a paper latte cup, then wrote my name on the cup.
I was served my latte not only in my mug, but inside of a paper cup inside of my mug.
I was speechless.
I turned around, walked away, and muttered "I'm trying to save the damn planet and you give me a latte in a paper cup INSIDE my mug?"
I think the guy behind me in line was amused, anyway.
Forget how I'm doing my part to screw the planet by driving a car, breathing, eating food grown outside of my yard, utilizing Starbucks' energy-sucking coffee-making process, etc. Let's shelve that for a moment.
How on earth is one of the most environmentally-responsible (?) companies in America allowing its employees ("partners") to serve customers ("guests") like that? Clearly this is a failure of a system. The poor girl at the autoplatz had no idea what to do with a personal mug. She needed to identify my drink. She used the traditional method to do so (writing on the cup). She didn't think that she was negating any benefit I was hoping to achieve.
Some Starbucks' have little stickies that go on your personal mug that identify your drink. Obviously this is as rare here as people who walk with purpose (don't remind me how much I hate the mouth-breathing masses who stroll around autoplatze aimlessly while I'm trying to find the bathroom and stand directly in my way. "Should I get this nut mix, Mabel?" "No. I like the one with the crunchy little sticks" "Where is that?" "I don't know, hold on..." walking directly into me in her lumbering mission to find the sesame sticks. I trip and give her an evil look. She focuses on the extremely vital task of helping her just-as-clueless spouse locate the correct assortment of crunchy and fatty snacks to pad their already-ample midsections before waddle out to their gas-guzzling Suburban and see more of the lovely New Jersey countryside via Turnpike.).
All scathing observations aside, I am writing to Starbucks not to berate the barrista, but to point out the gap in their communication in hopes they will prioritize it somewhere above changing the toilet paper roll in store #295766 in Wenatchee.Because the earth isn't getting any healthier.
8 comments:
Got another one for you... besides that fact that it is Wal-Mart. When I first moved, I made a number of trips to Wal-Mart for various items that I left in CA. My favorite was when the lady in front of me bought a reusable bag for $1, the cashier proceeded to ring it up and put it in a plastic bag. Granted she had bagged all the other items before the customer wanted the reusable bag, but since when does a reusable bag need a plastic bag. People don't think!! I was definitely shaking my head when I walked out of the store.
To play a devil's advocate...I always find it interesting when people discuss saving the Earth because it is never actually what they are talking about. They are really talking about trying to preserve the Earth in its current state so that we - humans - can continue to survive. The reason I find it interesting is that there is nothing that we can do to the Earth that will hurt it. It made mountains, it made oil, it has had ice ages, space debris hit it, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for environmentally friendly practices, but I also think it is important to put things in perspective from the Earth's point of view; things have been living, dying, becoming extinct, being created, continents forming, islands being destroyed for much longer than we have been around. I don't think we are going to hurt its feelings or save it by any of our efforts; we can just try to keep it in its current state as long as possible and attempt to buck the trend that has been going on for billions of years.
yo, lozano. (is it okay if someone you've never met before refers to you like that? :) ) i got an idea for some blog collaboration that i think you'd be up for (along with HairTwirler, JulyDream, and all these other wack folks.) It involves Vicious Electronic Questioning.
Shoot me an email at speedywithchicken@hotmail.com and we'll chat about it offline. if you dare.
I guess it depends on whether their cups are rapidly renewable or not. hmmm, I wonder what the LCA is like between your perma-cup vs. the paper cup. trees are easier to grow, one would think, than oil is to produce, or steel is to refine and mill and all that high production/energy intensive melting jazz. though 90%+ of all steel is recycled. is McDonough still hawking his utopian shite there at UVAg?
You've convinced me to be even more vigilant in my boycott of S-bucks. Indie coffee shops are not only more accommodating in all respects, but their coffee is invariably better.
They also don't offer recycling even though they serve cold drinks in recyclable plastic cups (ditto for all the milk that is used and bottled water). For some reason, here in Somerset, all citizens have to recycle and get blue bins for their homes, but no businesses in the county are required to recycle (and they don't even try).
Mandy,
I think we are soul mates.
A few months ago, I brought my reusable bags to the supermarket like always. The checkout girl started bagging my groceries in plastic and then placing them into the cloth bags.
ok, I had to come back to this post from the other day. I stopped at Starbucks this weekend and asked them if they would fill my water bottles (to which they always graciously agree and plug their triple filtered water). This time the woman walked away and filled two HUGE plastic cups full of water and ice and handed them to me. I felt horrible dumping that water into my bike bottles and immediately throwing the plastic in the trash.
I get that they may not want to dip my dirty bottle into the machine to scoop out ice, but there are obviously so many ways they could have generated much less waste...
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