Howard Schultz in The Huffington Post

On Civil Rights: Better race relations starts with conversation

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is encouraging the company's 191,000 employees to talk about race in America and other issues raised by police killings of unarmed black men in Ferguson MO and New York City. "The last few weeks, I have felt a burden of personal responsibility," Schultz told the crowd. "Not about the company, but about what's going on in America." He was referring to protests that have spread since grand juries failed to indict white police officers in the [two recent] killings. Schultz [penned a] letter afterwards, entitled, "It Starts With Conversation":

"Many shared personal experiences & offered ideas about how to move the conversation, our company & our country forward. People spoke with such conviction and vulnerability. Everyone demonstrated compassion and personal courage. The Forum was at times uncomfortable, yet overall it was enlightening. It provided many of us, myself included, with a deeper understanding around issues of race and the realities facing our country.

Source: Huffington Post, "Starbucks and Race" Dec 17, 2014

On Welfare & Poverty: FoodShare: Distribute unsold Starbucks items to food banks

In May, coffee giant Starbucks made headlines by announcing it would stop throwing out unsold food items and instead, redistribute the unsellable-but-still-edible products to nearby food banks in refrigerated vans. According to the goals of the new program, called FoodShare, Starbucks would provide five million meals in the first year and nearly 50 million by 2021, when it expects to reach a 100 percent donation rate. It's great that Starbucks is trying to reduce food waste, because the amount of food we Americans toss out has become a national epidemic.

Food waste is a national epidemic. Approximately 40 percent of food in the U.S. gets tossed out. It's is also an environmental issue: more than 97 percent of food waste ends up in landfills--33 million tons of food each year. Food waste is a pocketbook problem, a poverty, hunger, and health problem.

Source: 2016 Veepstakes: Huffington Post, "Reducing Food Waste" May 9, 2016

The above quotations are from Columns and news articles on the Huffington Post blog. Click here for other excerpts from Columns and news articles on the Huffington Post blog. Click here for other excerpts by Howard Schultz. Click here for a profile of Howard Schultz.
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Page last updated: Aug 04, 2024