It's holiday season, and we tend to do a lot of food shopping this time of year. With that in mind, how does your supermarket rank in terms of the environemnt? The following list applies to supermarkets in general -- Safeway, Food Lion, etc. Some are better than others with regard to the environment. For instance, Stop & Shop/Giant was just named "an Energy Star Leader by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in recognition of the superior energy performance of their supermarkets." That's a start, but supermarkets in general need to be doing more in the following areas.10. Parking lots -- and lots of 'em! For more on the evils of these things, see here. For instance, "The impervious surfaces of parking lots accumulate pollutants." Or, "land used for parking creates 1,000 times the heavy-metal runoff that it would if used for agriculture." Or, "Parking lots also contribute to the "urban heat island effect." Or, "there are few frustrations like driving around looking for a parking space, which has its own environmental impacts." Or, "parking lots themselves are black holes in the urban fabric, making city streets less walkable." 'Nuff said.
9. The buildings. To put it mildly, supermarket buildings are NOT environmentally friendly by "LEED" standards -- or any others, for that matter. Green roofs? Nope. Energy efficiency? With a few exceptions (see the Giant Energy Star story above), not that I can tell. Building placement designed with the environment in mind? Nope. Materials used to construct the building environmentally friendly? Nope. We could go on and on, but just look through the LEED standards and see how many criteria your supermarket scores highly on. Not many, I bet.
8. The food -- local? Where does most of the food at your supermarket come from? Local farms? Nope. Across the country or even the world? Yep -- an average of around 1,000 miles, using huge amounts of fuel to transport.
7. The food -- organic? How much of the food at your supermarket is organic, free range, etc? Not much; can we say pesticides, fertilizer, and waste galore?
6. The food -- packaging. How much of the food is packaged using the least materials possible? Not much, from the looks of it; what a waste.
5. Junk food. Look at the aisles of your supermarket and notice the huge varieties of food that's bad for you. Junk food, in other words. And note how relatively cheap it is, too. Why is this? Why isn't local, healthy food priced lower than sugar-laden junk? True, this situation isn't totally the supermarket industry's fault -- it's partly our wacky system of agricultural subsidies in this country -- but what's the supermarket industry in general doing to change this situation?
4. Non-food products -- paper. Good luck finding recycled paper products, despite that fact that "One million trees would be saved if every U.S. household replaced just one 250-count package of virgin fiber napkins with 100 percent recycled ones." Or that "424,000 trees would be spared by replacing a 500-sheet roll of virgin fiber toilet paper." So what the heck, supermarkets, why all the non-recycled garbage at your stores? Lame.
3. Non-food products -- other. Cleaning products (dish and laundry detergent, etc.) loaded with harmful chemicals and phosphates that harm the Chesapeake Bay. A very small percentage (if any) of lightbulbs that are CFL's. Also, does your supermarket actually try to market those CFL's, as WalMart does? Not that I can tell; instead, at my local supermarkets the CFL's -- if there are any at all -- are kind of tucked away in the corner, with no prominent explanation through prominent store advertising that they are both better for the environment AND save you money over the course of their lifetime. Pathetic.
2. Bagging your groceries. Right now, just to take one example, Giant Foods gives you 5 cents off your groceries for every reusable bag you use. I was talking to one of the clerks the other day, and she told me that MAYBE 5% of customers forgo the "paper or plastic" choice. Gee, you think that might be partly because 5 cents is...pretty much nothing?!? How about this idea, Giant (and other supermarkets): CHARGE people 50 cents (or whatever) per paper or plastic bag, and REFUND people the same (or more) per reusable bag? You think that might help you get people away from "paper or plastic?"
1. Meat products from factory farms. Just two words here: Smithfield. Foods. That's right, my local Giant Foods and many other supermarkets sell ham, pork chops and bacon from the company that, according to a Rolling Stone expose in December 2006, "churns out a sea of waste that has destroyed rivers, killed millions of fish and generated one of the largest fines in EPA history." As we know, aside from its dismal environmental record, Smithfield also employs and exploits illegal aliens, busts unions, and gives millions of dollars to politicians -- mainly, but not only, Republican -- to keep things humming along juuuuust the way they are. It's not just Smithfield either, and it's not just pork products. Why aren't supermarkets (and consumers) demanding food from sustainable farms that treat the environment, their employees, and the animals humanely?
Sadly, this list could go on and on, but I said "Top 10 ways," not "Top 100." With that, let me just give you one more "bonus" way your supermarket is bad; something else to think about this holiday season.
Biodiversity. According to this article ("5 Reasons not to shop in supermarkets"):
Because they are budgeting on a national scale, supermarkets encourage mass production from farms for maximum profit for the stores. They want farmers to grow large crops of the same variety, enough to supply their many customers. As a result, rather than producing, say, a range of the 2,300 different varieties of apple, farmers end up farming one variety intensively, reducing diversity and increasing the risk of damage from pests.
Yeah, how about them apples?
Green Arrow
2. Shop as much as possible from local farmers and farmers' markets.
3. Buy organic where possible and affordable.
4. If you have a choice of supermarkets, shop at the ones that are moving in the environmentally friendly direction. Stop & Shop/Giant appear to be making some improvements; I'd encourage those by shopping at those stores, but still doing #1-#3.
5. Start a vegetable garden if you have the land or join a community garden.
6. I'm sure there are lots of other ideas, please feel free to chime in! :)
Go green will hurt those who can least afford it. This will cause the poor to spend more of thier household budget on foods.
How about something more sensable. We let the Supermarket chains volunteer to go green. So for those who like to pay more can go to the Whole Foods, adn those who don't want to pay alot can go to Giant Food or Safeway. Go green would be much like a tax on the poor.
Going Green should be voluntary...
So you're saying those who can afford it should be able to eat food without pesticides that's quite possibly more nutritious, while poor people should be doomed to eat the cheapest, most pesticide-laden, genetically-modified franken-food that giant agri-business can provide them? That doesn't very egalitarian.
Green Arrow, Says, "your wrong"
Look, I'm not saying the residual pesticides in your food will kill you tomorrow. But you can't say they're definitely not harmful at all, either. So isn't it worth an extra 10% on your food bill to play it safe?
You also have to take into account other, mostly hidden costs. Taxpayers, poor and otherwise, have to foot the bill for many subsidies to conventional agricultural producers. We all have to pay for damage to the environment from the revolting practices of confined animal feeding operations and the impacts of pesticides and fertilizers on our land and water (bye bye Chesapeake Bay crabs and oysters). And we have to pay for impacts on our health of less nutritious food packed full of pesticides, growth hormones and antibiotics.
You call that a bargain? I call it a rip-off.
Next Generation of millionaires will be those who come up with commonsense Green Inventions to the market. Those who come up with a practical way of using hydrogen fuel cells, or the one comes up with Cold Fusion.
Little Fact no one tells you about the Toyota Pries, it has a larger carbon foot print larger to build the Pries; than a Hummer H2. So, how green can a Hybrid possibly be? Honestly a Pries is nothing more then snob drivers who like to look down at non hybrid drivers. We would do better if we got the old cars off the road, force people to replace appliances in the home every five years. Also another solution would be is to build more roads, how many pounds of CO2 are released while cars idol on the beltway or on any of our congested roads.
Hybrids aren't the answer?
The Answer is Investing in New Technology for propulsion systems, that no one has thought of today. Tell me if we didn't put are minds to it we couldn't come up with Transporter Technology like on Star Trek. Or come up with a new propulsion system.
We can't burden taxpayers or consumers. Taxpayers already pay way too much in taxes as it is. Don't anyone give me "?Taxes are needed for a civilized society?" I am positive Justice Holms would disagree with current taxes which are 48% of your income.
We can't forget that the Government isn't the solution to our problems but the cause of many of our Problems. Over Regulations, over taxation, too much red tape.
Let the Free market of ideas work; don't stifle innovation with governmental bureaucracies. Remember the Government Runs the DMV, IRS and the Post Office neither of those entities are a picture of efficentcy or innovation.
So, Green Arrows says ? "Go Green, but think first don't follow the masses like lemmings off a cliff."
Another large section of the book is focused on Joel Salatin , a highly innovative organic farmer whose Polyface Farms is based in the Shenandoah Valley!
It's on the paperback bestseller list right now, which probably means it's on sale somewhere. HIGHLY recommended.
Alternatives to the traditional supermarket (for at least some of your purchases) include:
- Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, My Organic Market, other health food stores and co-ops (they aren't perfect either but do have more environmentally preferable and healthier options);
- Farmer's Markets
- Direct purchase from farmers. There are deals like "metropolitan buying clubs" where you can get them to deliver seasonal produce and/or meat.
Go to Local Harvest to find local farmers and farmer's markets. Also check out EatWild for natural meat product producers in Virginia.
If you were starting a grocery store from scratch, would you sell incandescent bulbs that last 1/10th as long as CFLs and cost you 10 times as much on your power bill? What would get more shelf space, the food covered in pesticides or laden with antiobiotics or the food that wasn't?
Why? Human inertia. Incandescents may be a ripoff and no one can really say if pesticides are safe, but it's what we're used to so we don't question it.
There's also so much that is part of the system but hidden from view, e.g., the dreadful conditions of lifestock in "confined animal feeding operations" in which cows, chickens, etc. are crowded into tight conditions, fed whatever byproducts are cheapest (including body parts of their own species, even after the mad cow scare), and pumped full of drugs to keep them just well enough to make it to our dinner table.
That's our "cheap" food because we don't take all the costs to our health, environment and well-being into account.
I also don't think we can tell supermarkets to build Green when for the most part newly constructed buildings are very Green... Yes, the Gree Arrow by day is an Architect. I will tell you all the New Giant Food stores and Safeways are being built with high efficent light bulbs and Energy efficent refridgerators.
If you want to see energy hogs just go into any public school in America.
Green Arrow says... "Frank Lloyd Wright was over rated, Michael Graves was way better..."
It is true that an increasing number of grocery stores and other companies are employing green building, but to say that most of the new supermarkets are "very green" is a gross exaggeration. While green building is estimated to be nearing 5-10% of the building market, that leaves the vast majority of new (not to mention existing) buildings much less than green. There's no worse strategic error than declaring victory too quickly.
I'd also point out that in a post above you recommended as a solution to "force people to replace appliances in the home every five years" but you also are against government mandates. So who would you have do the enforcement, the mafia?
Believe me, I'm always glad to hear about architects interested in going green, but please do your homework rather than just relying on assumptions, or worse, on ideological bromides about the evils of Big Gov'mnt...
you can achieve this via Tax Breaks and incentives, they could make a purchase of energy effecient appliances tax deductable so you can deduct 1500 from your state income tax. You are able to do it once every 5 years. So if you by lets say a kitchen full of new appliances costing $5000 (prob alot less but this is if you got top of the line stuff) and new Dryer and Washer ($1100) you could deduct from your state income taxes $6100, how cool is that!!! and if that doesn't work we can give the mob thing a try just kidding...
But tax breaks make sence. People will tend to spend more if they know they will pay less taxes. We could even let people deduct the cost of home upgrades like new windows, doors, better insulatin, adding solar pannels to roofs, switching from a gas water heater to a Renie system (the one Paul harvey pushes)
Wouldn't you be willing to make improvements to your home if you knew you could write off the total cost of the improvement?
Green Arrow Says "...giving people money back to do good is a good idea.."
All new construction is more Green, Giant Food and Safeway both have adopted a Green Policy for all of thier new constructed stores. hence you'll see alot of Giants and Safeways in the near future the older ones being torn down and new more energy effiecnt ones going up in thier place. I welcome you to check out the new Safeway store being built in Kensington, Maryland it is the greenests Safeway in Maryland.