The largest coffee shop chain in the world Starbucks recently announced that it Chipotle’s CEO Brian Niccol, and that he is moving from Newport Beach, California, to SeattleWashington every week Starbucks‘ hybrid work policy. The distance between John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, California and Seattle International Airport is over 1,000 miles, and Niccol’s offer letter explains that he can use the company jet to fly from his home to the company headquarters. As it turns out, a weekly 2,000-mile round-trip flight on a private jet creates a huge carbon footprint.
Accordingly Flightaware.comThe Starbucks company’s plane is a 2007 Gulfstream G550, a 20-seat jet with two Rolls-Royce BR710 turbofan engines and an average fuel burn of 450 gallons per operating hour. The flight from Orange County to Seattle takes nearly 2 hours, meaning the jet burns 900 gallons of fuel each way. Transport & Environment, a European clean transportation advocacy group, says private jets can emit 2 tons of CO2 per operating hour, so Niccol’s weekly commute may emit about 4 tons of CO2 into the Earth’s atmosphere.
For comparison, the average American emits about 16 tons of CO2 annually. This means that this one aspect of the new Starbucks CEO’s monthly commute may be equivalent to the average American’s annual CO2 emissions. The average EU citizen generates an average of 8.2 tons of emissions annually. To reach this figure, Niccol would only need to commute for two weeks. As a caveat, it is not certain that Niccol will fly the G550 every week, but this is the best estimate we have at the moment. According to the Washington Post:
“Brian’s primary office and the majority of his time will be spent in our Seattle Support Center or visiting partners and customers in our stores, roasteries, roasting facilities and offices around the world,” Starbucks spokesman Andrew Trull said in an emailed statement Thursday. “Brian’s schedule will meet or exceed our hybrid work policies and workplace expectations we have for all partners.”
In 2020, Starbucks set a public goal to halve its direct carbon emissions from operations and supply chain by 2030. In March, Starbucks released its environmental and sustainability assessment, in which the coffee giant revealed that its greenhouse gas emissions have actually increased by 8 percent since the base year of 2019. Hiring Niccol and recognizing his super commute will make it significantly more difficult for the company to meet its emissions reduction goals, but the company doesn’t care as long as he increases value for shareholders. During his time as CEO of Chipotle, the company’s stock rose 773 percent according to CNBC, Therefore, Starbucks and its shareholders probably don’t care at all about the environmental damage Niccol’s commute might cause.
