Berjaya Starbucks Coffee Company Sdn. Bhd.
STARBUCKS UPCYCLED FLAVORLOCK™ POUCH
“Our aspiration is to be planet and people positive — investing in humanity and the well-being of everyone we connect with, from our partners to coffee farmers, to the customers in our stores and beyond.”
In 2019, Berjaya Starbucks Coffee Sdn Bhd (“Starbucks Malaysia”) partnered with the YWCA Kuala Lumpur, a non-profit organization that works for the development of women and girls, to develop its Starbucks Upcycled Flavorlock™ Pouch. The pouches, which now retails at Starbucks stores in Malaysia, demonstrates the company’s commitment to strengthen communities, uplift women, and provide a positive impact to the planet.
The Starbucks Upcycle Flavorlock™ Pouch is only made possible by the tens of thousands of customers who brought back their emptied Flavorlock™ whole bean bags at Starbucks stores across Malaysia. These whole bean bags, which was once used to hold our package coffee, are collected by our partners (employees) and donated to the social enterprise made up of the graduates of YWCA KL’s Vocational Training Opportunity Centre (VTOC) program, where the students go from cleaning the bags to matching and sorting the cloths that make the linings for the bags. That means, no one bag is identical!
Once the bags and the cloth has been matched, YWCA KL delegates the sewing through its VTOC Sewing & Tailoring course, which is made up of its students, Myammar refugees, as well as the B40 women of Desa Mentari. This program was especially helpful during the pandemic when the lockdown orders required many of us to work from our homes, allowing most of them to continue earning an income and be financially independent. The completed product is then purchased back by Starbucks Malaysia and distributed to its more than 360 locations nationwide.
The Starbucks Upcycled Flavorlock™ Pouches was official launched across all stores in Malaysia on March 2022, and with every pouched purchased, RM1 will be channeled to YWCA KL to contribute to develop the VTOC curriculums that have been built around empowering young girls and women from the B40 community. At Starbucks, our aim is to create both a positive impact on our planet and to strengthen the communities where our stores operate. By upcycling our whole bean packaging, we are effectively reducing our carbon footprint and environmental impact associated with our business.
In April 2022, Starbucks contributed RM374,400 (around US$90,000) to VTOC transformational project, which is a community-led initiative by YWCA Kuala Lumpur and its partners. The grant, with support from The Starbucks Foundation, will be utilized over three-years to enhance the VTOC courses, as well as equip the students with the knowledge and abilities required to thrive in an ever-changing, dynamic and uncertain environment in the aftermath of COVID-19.
