Starbucks is one of the more popular cafes around, and it has launched initiatives for providing clean, drinking water to impoverished countries. An article was written about this in USA Today.

The irony is, the same company is being criticized for wasting huge amounts of water. Here in New Zealand where a large number of areas still has drinkable tap water, this is indeed cause for alarm. Starbucks outlets have something called a dipper well where water continously flows during work hours at the rate of 10 liters a minute. This translates to 113 million liters a year in New Zealand alone. Read more about this at Stuff.

While the water left running is apparently for sanitation reasons, there has to be another way to clean up utensils and not let the milk foam build up. We do not have a limitless supply of drinking water.