In a very close vote, "Recycling" emerged as the top issue in the recent home page poll. The bottom line is that all of these issues are very important to the community, and the closeness of the vote reflects that. Question, and the full results: What is the most important issue on MSI? Bold Coffee/PPR: 25% WiFi Program: 21% Recycling: 29% Loyalty Program: 22% Other: 2% See some discussion of this question here: The Big Ideas on MSI You may have also noticed that the Leaderboard on the home page changed today. This week's Leaderboard shows only recent contributions--and there were some surprises. Nice job 33Mac and TLCTX! We also have a new 1st place: well done JavaOcha! And thank … more »

It’s not an apple to welcome teachers back to school, but a cup of coffee. In recognition of teachers, Starbucks is offering school teachers, grades K-12 a complimentary tall cup of brewed coffee on Mondays during the month of September. Bring in your teacher identification to any Starbucks. We appreciate the many ideas you’ve shared on MSI to recognize the wonderful work of teachers. Coffee for the Teachers

As you might imagine, the people who visit MSI also visit Starbucks. A lot. Here are the results of the last poll question: How many Starbucks visits have you made in the last 30 days? 0: 5% 1-3: 10% 4-6: 14% 7-10: 14% 10+: 55% Thanks for playing. And thank you so much for being such great customers.

In an effort to make MSI more user-centric, we launched a number of new features today on the home page. Here is a rundown of the new goodness: Question of the Day : This frequently-changing question will be a quick poll to the MSI community about topics you care about, or about you! Today we’re curious how often you go to Starbucks. Most Recent Ideas : With more than 65,000 ideas submitted so far and more coming in every hour, it’s a lot to keep track of. Well, now you can see the 10 most recent ideas right on the home page. Our other idea sorting views-- Top All Time Ideas , Top Currently Popular Ideas , and a longer, clickable version of the Recent Ideas are all still available … more »

If you are a regular reader on this site, you’ve seen a number of ideas and suggestions for improvement about recycling. Here are a few ideas: Offer recycling of paper cups Offer composting in all stores Start using a plastic cup that is recyclable While we don’t yet have an answer for every store, we’ve started a significant effort to improve--more to come on that in future blogs. I also thought it would be illustrative to take some time to tell you what we’re doing at the Seattle Support Center—that’s the name for our world headquarters here in Seattle. This building is 2.3 million square feet (trivia bit: more square footage than any other single building … more »