Green Options » supermarket

How Green Is Your Grocery Store?

Jennifer Kaplan — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:00:21 +0000

Last night Keilly Witman from EPA’s GreenChill Advanced Refrigeration Partnership, the program that attempts to get grocery stores to reduce ozone-killing refrigerant leaks, talked at EcoTuesday in DC. What I thought might not be our most exciting topic turned out to be one of the most interesting I’ve heard in the 8 months of co-hosting these events.

Ozone-depleting refrigerants are also potent greenhouse gases. One pound of the most commonly used HFC refrigerants has the same impact as about 4000 lbs of CO2. This is why Witman calls the reduction of refrigerant leaks the low-hanging-fruit of emissions control. There are 35,000 supermarkets in the US and each typically carries about 4000 lbs of refrigerant and leaks about 25% of that. So, you do the math: 1000 lbs of high global warming gas from each of 35,000 supermarkets = 35,000,000 lbs leaked each year. And its pretty simple and cheap to cut that number in half, which is where most GreenChill partner markets come in.

According to a 2008 GreenChill press release:

Compared to the rest of the supermarket industry, GreenChill partners are already emitting fewer ozone-depleting refrigerants and greenhouse gases than their competitors, and saving money at the same time. The partners’ savings in operating costs equal almost $13 million.

If every supermarket in the nation joined GreenChill and reduced their emissions to the current GreenChill average, the industry could prevent the release of 13 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent and 157 ozone-depleting potential tons annually.

GreenChill has about 30 supermarket partners. Let’s start applying the Big Green Purse principle and ask: Is your market a Greenchill partner or should you shop elsewhere?

Whole Foods Market Sells $425 million Equity Stake to Leonard Green & Partners

Reenita Malhotra — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 08:22:12 +0000

Whole Foods Market announced last week that it will sell a 17 percent stake in the company to the private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners for $425 million.

Whole Foods Market is the world’s leading natural and organic foods supermarket and America’s first national certified grocer. Leonard Green & Partners is a private investment firm established in 1989 which manages about $9 billion in capital.

Like many other businesses, Whole Foods has suffered the brunt of the economic crisis as consumer spending has gone down. It has been forced to restructure in multiple ways including cutting back on its expansion plans. John Mackey, chairman, chief executive and co-founder of Whole Foods Market said in a statement that the company viewed Leonard Green’s investment “as a strong vote of confidence in our business model and our long-term growth prospects, despite the current economic environment.”

Read here for the complete press release: Whole Foods Market Announces $425 Million Equity Investment by Leonard Green & Partners, L.P.

Tomato Powered Supermarket

mcmilker — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:32:21 +0000

UK Supermarket goes green growing tomatoes for power.
Photograph: Martin Argles

How To Plant the Fair Trade Seed in Your Community

Brady Swenson — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:30:25 +0000

The Fair Trade movement operates under the basic market principle of supply and demand. In order to spread the ideas of economic sustainability and justice to others, we create demand for Fair Trade by spreading the word. But with demand for Fair Trade products repidly increasing (by more than 40% a year) around the world, we need to ensure that Fair Trade products are easily accessible in the marketplace. And just like we generate demand through educating consumers, we can help create supply by educating the retail shops that supply the goods we consume.

There are many excellent resources available online to help you organize and start an effort to educate the retailers in your community. Coffee shops and grocery stores are great places to start. Here are four actions you can take to start planting the seeds of Fair Trade in your community and then grow those seeds into a healthy Fair-Trade-supporting community.

1. Ask. Start planting the seeds by simply ask your local coffee shop and grocery store if they carry any Fair Trade products. With the rising popularity of Fair Trade, the chances that you can find Fair Trade coffee or bananas at the shops you frequent are getting better and better, especially if you live in the UK or Europe.

2. Send a letter to the manager. Global Exchange provides a good template for a letter about Fair Trade coffee to send to the manager of a store you frequent. Oke Bananas will send you request cards that friends, family and other interested consumers can sign and deliver to your grocery store to educate and encourage management to carry their Fair Trade bananas from Central America. Catholic Relief Services and Divine chocolate has a good one-sheet of talking points (PDF) that could form a good letter on why your grocer should carry Fair Trade chocolate.

3. Start a campaign to educate your supermarket. Co-op America and Ox-Fam America have teamed up to put together a great Super Market Campaign Kit. The Kit provides materials, information and practical tips to help you organize a campaign to pressure your supermarket to carry Fair Trade products whereever possible.

4. Nourish your town into a Fair Trade community. Gather a group to help you get your town or city council to pass a purchasing restriction that legally requires local government to use Fair Trade coffee. If you belong to a faith community, encourage the community to incorporate Fair Trade into the official budget (PDF). Finally, TransFair Canada has put together a great document to guide you through the Fair Trade Town (PDF) certification process.

Good luck, and keep us updated on any efforts you might take to help make Fair Trade products more easily accessible in the market!