Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc

a) The main facts about the activities of the company.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is recognized as a leader in the specialty coffee industry for its award-winning coffees, innovative brewing technology and socially and environmentally responsible business practices. GMCR manages its operations through two wholly owned business segments: Green Mountain Coffee and Keurig. Its Green Mountain Coffee division sells more than 100 high-quality coffee selections, including organic coffees, under the Green Mountain Coffee and Newman’s Own Organics brands through its wholesale, direct mail and e-commerce operations. Green Mountain Coffee also produces its coffee as well as hot cocoa and tea. Keurig, Incorporated is a pioneer and leading manufacturer of gourmet single-cup coffee brewing systems for offices, homes and hotel rooms. Keurig markets its patented brewers and K-Cup portion packs through office distributors, retail and direct channels. K-Cup portion packs are produced by a variety of licensed roasters including Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. has been recognized repeatedly by CRO Magazine, Forbes and SustainableBusiness.com as a good corporate citizen and an innovative, high-growth company.

b) The ethical challenges this company is addressing.

Promoting sustainable coffe:

• GMCR promote Fair Trade Certified coffees, which represents 27% of coffe pounds shipped.
• GMCR promote certified organic coffees which represents 20% of coffe pounds shipped.

Working in hungry and poverty:

• They allocate 5% of their pre-tax earnings to social and environmental causes.
• They are making a pilot project to reduce poverty and hungry in their supply chain.
• The company has created a fund to help coffe-growing communities recover from natural disasters.

Energy and waste reduction:

• GMCR has reduced their GHG footprint through the installation of a biodiesel fueling station at their distribution center.
• They have reduced their energy usage by 5%.
• The waste has been reduced 10%.
• They have introduced new packaging that is made by renewable materials.

Creating a great place to work:

• Injury reduced by 10%.
• Medical and social benefits for the employees.

c) What makes you believe this company is really ethical and why you trust it.

This company is not making social responsibily actions for compensating their usual business activity, which could have a negative impact in the environtment. What this company is really doing is having their entire company based on a social responsibly policy. A very important percentatge of their sales comes from their sustainable coffes. Despite being such a responsibly company, they work hard every year for achieving their goals in terms of improving the environment they are working in.

d) The possible challenges facing the company in the future and how you think this company may improve.

The company and their challenges in the future are based on developing more deeply the development programs for their coffee-growing communities, which are helping a lot of people in in-development countries.
Another important goal is increasing their source of sustainable coffees and the sales-percentage of this kind of coffe.
In the next years they have planned to develop a system for improving theyr social responsibility metrics for knowing better the impact of their actions in the society.
In terms of environmental policies, the company has the intention of reducing every year the energy use and the total amount of waste.