Global Green News
Starbucks brews global green-building plan, renovates Seattle shop
GRIST. JUNE 30, 2009. By Sarah van Schagen
Photo: Sarah van Schagen
Stroll into the newly renovated Starbucks coffeehouse in Seattle’s University Village and the décor may feel more familiar than you’d expect.
The menu boards are made from the chalkboards you may have scribbled on at nearby Garfield High School; the shelving is from old bleachers you may have sat upon; the leather accents near the bar are from your old shoes and car seats; and the ash-wood community table that stretches the length of the store and patio (one-third of it is outside) is salvaged from a tree that fell in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood.
It’s part of an effort to create a shared sense of community while reducing impact on the planet—all by sourcing materials locally. But it’s no one-off show-off. The University Village store is actually one of three pilot locations (another in Seattle is on the corner of 1st Ave. and Pike St., and a third is in Paris Disney Village in Paris, France) for the company’s new global store design strategy.
That strategy, which is part of the brand’s Shared Planet initiative, also involves employing local artisans and craftsmen and incorporating reused and recycled materials as much as possible. All of which will help the stores achieve LEED green building certification—the goal for all new company-owned stores built and renovated beginning in 2010.
“This green store vision for the company has been happening and building in momentum for several years now,” says Jim Hanna, director of environmental impact for Starbucks. “When we ran our carbon footprint, it basically said that 75 percent of our total carbon footprint is operation of our stores ... so if we were really going to have an impact on reducing our footprint, we had to start with the stores.”
And this particular store, which reopened to coffeehounds at 6 a.m. this morning, is the company’s second busiest globally, which makes it a perfect location for testing the green design concepts. One of those new elements is the lighting: Unhappy with the LED options available on the market, Starbucks partnered with GE to create an LED light fixture that wouldn’t be so harsh.
