Gallons of water for some coffee?

When a friend informed me last month that the well-known Starbucks Coffee chain was wasting millions of gallons of water a day, it came as a big shock. Surely, the coffee chain which claims to embrace green principles by requesting customers to bring their own tumblers instead of consuming paper cups could not commit such a gaffe, I thought. Besides, drinking water does not come cheap in countries such as Singapore and Australia, I reasoned. How naïve I was.