Starbucks’ Extra Tall Disaster

Starbucks’ logo may be green, but its practices aren’t: An investigation by the London Sun tabloid discovered that the ubiquitous coffee chain mandates that all 10,000 of its outlets keep a faucet constantly running—wasting an amount of water each day that would quench the thirst of drought-ridden Namibia’s entire population. The policy’s stated purpose is hygienic, but experts dismissed that explanation as “nonsense.” Starbucks justifies the policy by running the taps at “very low pressure,” but it may be better to, you know, give a reason. “We don’t know what it is,” an employee said in Romania. “Nobody ever uses it.”