Starbucks found itself in hot water again this week after a Beijing newspaper attacked the company for wasting water.
Two articles in the Beijing Evening News accused the company of being unaware of the city's water-saving guidelines due to its practice of setting taps on coffee workbenches to flow constantly.
The reports, published on Tuesday and Wednesday, estimated that each tap ran for 16 hours a day and that at least 100 tonnes of fresh water flowed each day from the more than 50 Starbucks outlets in Beijing, which suffers from an extreme water shortage.
The reports were soon picked up by mainland media and circulated on the internet.
The People.com website even conducted an online survey that found about 90 per cent of 2,434 respondents considered Starbucks guilty of wasting water.
But Starbucks defended itself yesterday, claiming it was an environmentally friendly enterprise. The company said it was using a standard global practice and would not make changes for its China operations.