Starbucks Reassesses Climate Targets as Overall Emissions Rise 7%, Despite Operational Progress
July 4 - 2026
Coffee Geography Magazine
Starbucks is undertaking a fundamental review of its corporate environmental pledges, including a potential revision of its absolute greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal, the company disclosed in its 2025 global impact report published July 1. The reassessment comes as the world’s largest coffeehouse chain revealed a 7 percent increase in its overall carbon footprint, even as it made significant strides in cutting emissions from its direct operations and electricity use.
The company cut operational and electricity-related emissions by 17 percent in fiscal 2025, driven partly by more than 13,000 cafés now meeting strict standards for energy efficiency, water conservation and waste reduction. That figure represents roughly one-third of all global locations and surpasses the company’s original target of 10,000 greener stores.
However, these gains were offset by growth elsewhere, pushing total emissions up by 7 percent compared to the 2019 baseline year. Starbucks had previously committed to cut its emissions, water use and waste by half by 2030. That target is now under active review.
Kelly Goodejohn, Starbucks’ chief sustainability and social impact officer, said the company is taking a “fresh, comprehensive look” at all corporate priorities as part of the Back to Starbucks financial turnaround plan launched by CEO Brian Niccol when he was hired in September 2024. As a result of that review, sustainability work has been embedded directly into the company’s business units to “promote continued accountability among senior leaders for achieving our goals,” Goodejohn said in a blog post accompanying the report.
Kelly Goodejohn, Starbucks’ chief sustainability and social impact officer
Goodejohn, who spent 15 years working on Starbucks coffee sourcing programs, assumed oversight of sustainability functions in mid-May 2025, when the company eliminated approximately 300 corporate roles and absorbed those responsibilities into the social impact team. The company has since remained relatively quiet about its net-zero plans, and the new report confirms it is reviewing its targets as required by the Science Based Targets initiative guidelines.
“With respect to the goal on greenhouse gas reduction, we are actively reassessing it while we evaluate the implications of emerging regulations, ongoing updates to relevant standards and other developments, and will share updates soon,” Goodejohn said.
The company’s supply chain remains the dominant source of its climate footprint. Green coffee purchases and dairy milk together accounted for a quarter of Starbucks’ total emissions in fiscal 2025—12 percent and 13 percent respectively. Those percentages are unchanged from the previous year’s analysis. The Arabica green coffee beans that the company brews and sells are sourced from coffee belt countries particularly vulnerable to climate change, including Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Honduras, Indonesia, Nicaragua and Vietnam.
Starbucks signaled that investments in regenerative agriculture and support for coffee farmers remain central to its long-term strategy, even as corporate-level targets are re-evaluated. “That’s why our approach, as we get Back to Starbucks, combines operational excellence in our coffeehouses with more focused research development and investment in the regions we source coffee from,” the company stated in the report.
The company has nine sustainability pledges in place, including strict coffee sourcing standards and farmer support initiatives. More than 400,000 farmers currently follow its sourcing guidelines. Starbucks also announced it has reached a goal of distributing 100 million climate-resilient coffee trees, designed to help farmers cope with changing rainfall and temperature patterns, and committed to distributing an additional 50 million trees.
On waste reduction, Starbucks reported a 77 percent increase in in-store reusable cup participation in fiscal 2025 and reiterated its goal of incorporating 25 percent recycled content into its packaging by 2030.
The report makes clear that the evolution of Starbucks’ climate goals will depend on external conditions. “Whether Starbucks will keep its current plan to cut emissions in half by 2030 will be dictated by evolving market conditions,” Goodejohn said. The company has not yet provided a timeline for when the revised target will be announced.