This includes moving from plastic to recyclable paper mailers, right-sizing cardboard box packaging, giving customers the option to consolidate shipping on e-commerce orders, opting out of single-use plastic bags for online pickup orders and last mile delivery efficiencies to reduce mileage and delivery times.

Reducing waste

Moving forward, nearly all orders shipped in plastic mailers from fulfillment centers, stores and marketplace items shipped with Walmart Fulfillment Services, will arrive in recyclable paper bag mailers. This transition is expected to eliminate 65 million plastic bag mailers or more than 2,000 tons of plastic from circulation in the U.S. by the end of the current fiscal year.

Additionally, customers will soon have the choice to opt out of single-use plastic bags for their online pickup orders. Early tests indicate promising adoption rates and potentially helping eliminate millions of single-use bags each year from circulation. Walmart expects to complete rollout nationwide by the end of the year.

“Our commitment to regeneration is core to who we are and how we innovate at Walmart. Customers have told us how excited they are about these enhancements to make it easier for them to make more sustainable choices that support the planet and the next generation,” said Karisa Sprague, SVP, fulfillment network operations.

Right-sized packages and consolidated shipping

Walmart is also transitioning to right-sized packaging technology in about half of its fulfillment network. This technology helps create a package custom fitted to the customer’s order. By eliminating unused space in the box, this technology reduces the need for filler by 60 percent while reducing waste caused by oversized boxes by as much as 26 percent.

Additionally, all Walmart customers shopping online can request consolidation of multiple items into fewer boxes, reducing waste as well as the number of shipments.

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The program encourages shoppers to purchase a reusable bag with a charity design for $2.69 with $1 of the proceeds being donated to five local community organizations. Since its inception, Tops has raised $519,846 for area charities.

These bags support local chapters of organizations, such as the United Way, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Feeding America including area food banks and pantries and Children’s Miracle Network including children’s hospitals. 

The grocer also recently introduced a new “Tops in Education” bag that links to its Tops in Education Program, which provides much needed funds back to area school programs and services. The TIE program alone has raised more than $1.2 million dollars for area schools.

In addition to its philanthropic mission, the program helps Tops commit to its environmental commitment of reducing its carbon footprint. In 2022, it reduced its use of plastic by more than 424 tons.

“Our consumers have a wide array of reusable bags to choose from that consist of cloth and recycled materials which can easily and economically be purchased at the store. To see consumers, make the choice however, to give back to these charities by purchasing a Tops ‘Totes for Change’ bag is truly heartwarming,” said Kathy Sautter, director of corporate communications and public relations.

Tops Markets operates 150 grocery stores in New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont, including five that are run by franchisees.

To learn more about its sustainability efforts, visit topsmarkets.com/sustainability.

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A key component of the certification process is sustainability benchmarking at all of a food retailer’s stores. This involves an initial benchmark or assessment of their sustainability performance against a common standard, followed by measuring their progress against the benchmark over time. The aim is to drive the best sustainability practices and align them with corporate initiatives. 

Based on data collected throughout the process, Hannaford’s energy efficiency, water efficiency and cardboard recycling measures have reduced their annual CO2 emissions by about 300,000 metric tons. These reductions are equivalent to removing 65,400 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles from U.S. roads for a year. They are also comparable to taking a 15-megawatt coal power plant out of service in each of the communities in which Hannaford operates. 

In 2014, Hannaford became the first grocery retail chain to enroll in the Grocery Stewardship Certification, the predecessor to the Sustainable Food Retail Certification. Hannaford recertified 2015-17 and 2019. Sustainability benchmarking, tracking and ongoing certification have helped enable the company’s impressive emissions reductions over the last decade. 

During the most recent certification, Ratio Institute identified additional specific workplace practices, sustainability measures and capital improvements to drive further operational efficiencies. 

“Hannaford’s ongoing certification work with Ratio Institute has been instrumental in achieving its sustainability goals and reaffirming its community commitment,” said George Parmenter, health and sustainability brand lead for Hannaford Supermarkets.

“We appreciate Ratio Institute’s specific, itemized recommendations to enhance sustainability, operational performance, and community stewardship. The certification process and Ratio Institute’s expertise enable Hannaford to refine its sustainability strategy and plans over time.”

Peter Cooke, co-founder of Ratio Institute, said, “Hannaford has been improving store operations through sustainable practices since 2014. The company is a sustainability leader in the food retail industry because of its systematic, consistent approach to the Sustainable Food Retail Certification at all of its stores across five states.” 

Hannaford Supermarkets is an industry leader in sustainability. This dates back to the mid-1980s when Hannaford became the first grocery retailer in the nation to introduce reusable bags to its customers. The retailer diverts or donates all food at risk of going to waste, sending no food to landfills.

In 2022, Hannaford donated 25 million pounds of food to hunger relief organizations and prevented 65 million pounds of food waste from reaching landfills. 

Additional information about the retailer’s sustainability initiatives can be found here. 

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The report looks at the role of food waste in the current climate crisis and how reducing waste at the retail level has the potential to lower greenhouse gas emissions, slow climate change and address the connected problems of hunger and food insecurity.

Exploring consumer perception is also a key component of the report, as the company aims to emphasize not just the value of the climate impact, but the consumer appetite for Flashfood.

New findings from a 2023 survey conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of Flashfood demonstrate a clear desire for change. The majority of adult grocery shoppers in the U.S. are struggling with the cost of healthy eating, and they view the reduction of food waste as an important priority.

• Nearly nine in 10 Americans say managing food waste is important to them.
• The majority of Americans agree that the rising cost of food is making healthy eating more difficult for them.
• Seventy-seven percent are concerned about the environmental impact of food waste (e.g., on land, water, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity).
• Three quarters of Americans (75 percent) believe that reducing food waste is important for solving climate change.

“At Flashfood, we believe everyone deserves to eat healthy, affordable food and to live on a thriving planet. Food waste stands in the way of both,” said Josh Domingues, founder and CEO of Flashfood.

“That’s why we’re setting our sights on massive expansion this year: to be available in more places and at more stores with the goal of saving our consumers money on groceries and rescuing millions more pounds of food from landfills.”

The report also serves as a celebration of the company’s milestones and an expression of gratitude for the ecosystem that makes a marketplace like Flashfood possible. Retail partners are spotlighted as the heroes on the food waste journey and the key to future growth.

“We wanted this report to reflect the incredible impact of our retail partners,” said Nicholas Bertram, president and COO.

“These exceptional operators understand the fundamental link between hunger and waste. They see the opportunity that this massive problem has created, which is why they’ll be the ones to help solve it – and win.”

Dana Gunders, executive director of the national food waste nonprofit ReFED, said in the report, “Retailers play an especially important role because they sit at the center of the food system and have so much opportunity to influence the supply chain upstream and downstream. By implementing waste reduction solutions in their operations, retailers can not only benefit their bottom lines, but they can show their customers and partners what’s possible.”

Flashfood’s “The State of Food Waste” serves up a one-stop-shop for all the things a reader needs to know about the company and the importance of eliminating food waste, with statistics about grocery shopping and Flashfood usage sprinkled throughout.

To read the full report, visit Flashfood’s website.

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“Plastic drink containers are highly recyclable, but only 2 percent of the world’s plastic packaging gets recycled in a closed loop, so it’s vital that we look at what motivates recycling behavior and what consumers are seeking from the recycling experience.”

Consumers prioritize the environment and want to go paperless

The research, which surveyed 7,000 consumers across seven European countries, found that consumers’ main motivation to return their containers in a deposit system was getting back the deposit paid on their drink containers (76 percent of respondents). This was followed by consideration for the environment (59 percent), keeping their home tidy (44 percent) and reducing litter in the community (42 percent).

The research found that returning drink containers for recycling has become an established habit for consumers, with an average of 93 percent of respondents returning at least 90 percent of their containers. Sixty-six percent of respondents would also like to be able to return other used drink containers for recycling and receive a refund, and 21 percent would like to be able to donate their deposit refund to charity direct from the reverse vending screen.

The most common frequency for returning containers was one-two times per month (46 percent of respondents), with 66 percent of respondents returning up to 29 containers during each recycling session. Young people were found to recycle less often than the average, but with a higher volume of containers on each occasion.

“Europe is a frontrunner in environmental initiatives and legislation, such as the Single-Use Plastics Directive, and these consumer research findings can indicate how recycling behavior could develop in the U.S. where interest in recycling and deposit return legislation is growing,” Riegle said.

Reverse vending a top reason to choose a store

When choosing where to return their drink containers, a reverse vending area was considered the third-most important criteria, after the store being the one where they normally shop or close to home. It was the second-most important criteria for high-volume recyclers (returning more than 50 containers each time). Well-functioning recycling facilities were ahead of easy parking and presence of self-service check-outs as factors in deciding a store. Eighty-seven percent of respondents put their deposit refund towards grocery purchases.
  
The desire for an efficient recycling experience was also seen in respondents’ interest in multi-feed reverse vending, where consumers can pour in a bag of containers in one go, rather than inserting them one by one. Forty-six percent of respondents would like to use multi-feed reverse vending.

For more information about the report, visit tomra.com.

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The facility is located in Dakota City, Nebraska, with NW Natural investing about $12 million to convert methane captured from the facility’s operations into RNG to heat homes and businesses. The first project began at Tyson’s Lexington, Nebraska, operations in January 2022.

At full capacity, the two projects combined are expected to produce about 240,000 MMBtu of RNG each year – enough to provide heat for more than 5,400 homes annually.

“Each project like this contributes meaningful carbon reductions on behalf of our customers and moves us toward achieving our shared climate goals,” said David H. Anderson, NW Natural president and CEO. “We’re aggressively pursuing additional opportunities, so we can increase our use of renewables over time.”

NW Natural is working toward procuring RNG equivalent to 5 percent of its Oregon sales volume in 2024 and 6 percent in 2025 as part of the company’s voluntary targets. These investments are made possible through the landmark RNG law, Oregon Senate Bill 98, which supports renewable energy procurement and investment by natural gas utilities.

RNG is produced from the breakdown of organic materials like agricultural and forestry byproducts, food waste, wastewater or landfills. RNG can provide similar climate benefits to wind and solar, with the reliability and seasonal storage capabilities of natural gas – all while capturing, conditioning and utilizing organic material that would otherwise contribute carbon to the atmosphere.

Partners for these projects include BioCarbN, an Idaho-based developer and operator of renewable energy projects and Miron Construction Co. Inc., a Wisconsin-based design-build and construction company. These projects are made possible through pipeline interconnections with local gas distribution systems – MidAmerican Energy in Dakota City, and Black Hills Energy in Lexington.

For more information, visit tysonfoods.com or nwnatural.com.

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“We are continually looking for creative and innovative solutions to support our vision of creating zero-waste communities,” said Juan De Paoli, VP of Our Brands for Kroger.

“Our customers sharing in that commitment by recycling packaging and purchasing products made with upcycled ingredients, alongside our efforts to advance sustainability, makes important progress toward eliminating waste and creating healthy, thriving communities.”

Kroger, the first retailer in the world to offer a free flexible plastic packaging recycling program for its Our Brands products in collaboration with TerraCycle, has recycled more than one million pieces of packaging since the program began in 2020.

The program provides customers with free, prepaid shipping labels to mail in flexible plastic Our Brands packaging. The list of eligible products can be viewed online and customers may sign up here. The recycled materials are used to construct playgrounds donated by Kroger to youth and community organizations.

The retailer is also working toward its “Zero Hunger | Zero Waste” mission by expanding its product selection containing upcycled ingredients with the addition of Seeded Multigrain Bread and Multigrain Quinoa Bread to the Simple Truth sustainable lineup, both Upcycled Certified by the Upcycled Food Association. The bread is blended with upcycled barley, wheat and rye grains, with each variety topped with ingredients like sunflower, flax, black sesame, pumpkin seeds and quinoa.

Other Simple Truth Upcycled Certified products include Plant-Based Dark Chocolate Brownie Mix, Plant-Based Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix, Plant-Based Sugar Cookie Mix and the new Simple Truth Gluten Free Banana Bread Mix made with upcycled okara flour.

The UFA, joined by Kroger in 2022, is the first of its kind trade association working to prevent food waste by accelerating the upcycled food economy. UFA is a network of more than 225 businesses from around the world collaborating to empower consumers to prevent food waste with the products they purchase.

Customers can find Our Brands, Simple Truth products and more by shopping in-store, through Kroger Pickup or delivered using Boost by Kroger Plus, the annual grocery delivery membership that can save customers up to $1,000 per year on fuel and grocery delivery. Eligible customers can try the Boost membership with a free 30-day trial and subscribe on a monthly basis.

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For more than 104 years, it’s been the company’s legacy and passion to operate in a way that drives growth and helps others. In 2020, the company formalized its sustainability plans with a clear strategic action roadmap, “The Green Path Forward.”

This plan details its collective efforts into one set of objectives that serve as guideposts in three key focus areas:

• Preserving the environment;
• Working to eliminate waste; and
• Lessening its carbon footprint.

With less than three years into its roadmap, C&S Wholesale Grocers has many programs and initiatives underway that are driving its sustainability goals. For more about these efforts in C&S’s Sustainability Report, click here.

“This year, we made many strides in our strategic sustainability goals contained within C&S’s ‘The Green Path Forward,'” said Bob Palmer, CEO.

“I am very proud of the work that the C&S team does every day. Not only do we feed our communities, but we also operate in a way that ensures our planet is healthy for generations to come.

Founded in 1918 as a supplier to independent grocery stores, C&S Wholesale Grocers services customers of all sizes, supplying more than 7,500 independent supermarkets, chain stores, military bases and institutions with more than 100,000 different products.

To learn more, visit cswg.com.

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On April 22, customers who visit any H-E-B, Central Market, Joe V’s Smart Shop and Mi Tienda in Texas are eligible to receive a complimentary Earth Day bag. Since 2008, H-E-B has given out more than three million reusable bags in celebration of Earth Day.

Customers can purchase additional Earth Day reusable bags for $1.50. This year’s Earth Day tote highlights the H-E-B “Our Texas, Our Future” commitment, which is the company’s mission to increase awareness and education around sustainability efforts that help preserve land, water and air in Texas. Throughout the year, H-E-B reduces its impact on the environment through waste diversion efforts along with several other programs to help conserve and protect the state.

For Earth Month in April, H-E-B launched multiple ventures aimed at supporting plastic waste reduction and providing sustainable alternatives for shoppers.

Among those efforts, students from classrooms across Texas collected thousands of pounds of plastic bags as part of H-E-B’s Annual School Plastic Bag Recycling Challenge. This year, more than 600 elementary schools in Texas collected more than 4 million plastic bags for the challenge. The schools that collected the most plastic bags will receive H-E-B gift cards as prizes. 

This year’s winners are:

• Border Region: Matias Elementary, Borchers Elementary and Heights Elementary;
• Central Texas Region: Fern Bluff Elementary, Emile Elementary and Perez Elementary;
• Gulf Coast Region: Robert Driscoll Elementary, Refugio Elementary and San Pedro Elementary;
• Houston Region: Memorial Parkway Elementary, Coulson-Tough Elementary and Robertson Elementary;
• North/West Texas Region: Simpson Elementary, Felty Elementary and Bowie Elementary; and
• San Antonio Region: Randall Fields Elementary, Hopkins Elementary and Lyndon B. Johnson Elementary.

H-E-B, in partnership with Keep Texas Recycling, selected six projects across the state, which will benefit from the 2023 H-E-B Community Recycling Grants. These grants support projects that focus on increasing access to recycling by funding infrastructure improvements, material resources and access to educational recycling materials. Grant funds totaling $157,000 will fund projects in Pharr, Ingleside, Cuero, Texas City, Burleson County and San Angelo.

Additionally, stores will host in-store environmental education scavenger hunts in partnership with EcoRise. The scavenger hunts are self-guided tours through H-E-B stores, showing elementary age children ways H-E-B works to protect the environment and how they can adopt sustainable practices. The scavenger hunt information can be found on the Our Texas, Our Future website and printed versions are available in stores.

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The report is part of its ongoing commitment to transparency and accountability in all its operations. It is designed to provide customers, investors and stakeholders with an overview of the grocer’s approach to sustainability and social responsibility.

“At Southeastern Grocers, we understand the importance of making informed purchasing decisions that have a positive impact on the environment,” said Anthony Hucker, president and CEO.

“We are committed to being responsible stewards of our planet’s resources, and in 2022, we made significant strides in fulfilling our environmental commitments and implementing sustainable improvements. We believe working together with our customers, supplier partners and communities is key to achieving our environmental goals as we continue leading the way in promoting positive change for the health of our planet and making a lasting impact on future generations.”

The grocer’s ESG report highlights its progress in key areas aligned with six United Nations Sustainable Development Goals addressing hunger, health, education, inequalities, responsible consumption and production and ocean conservation.

In 2022, Southeastern Grocers donated more than $700,000 and 14 million pounds of food to help alleviate hunger, as well as $2.55 million to support crucial emergency assistance, disaster preparedness and relief programs locally in the wake of Hurricane Ian and overseas in support of the citizens of Ukraine.

The grocer also donated more than $1.25 million to Folds of Honor, providing more than 250 educational scholarships to the children and spouses of fallen and disabled military service members; and gave about $2 million in support to various military, health and local community initiatives.

The grocer is also working to include an average of 30 percent post-consumer recycled material in all Own Brand packaging. Southeastern Grocers continues to collaborate with supplier partners and stakeholders to work toward achieving sustainable product and packaging goals.

Southeastern Grocers recently formed a partnership with Relocalize to pilot ice manufacturing in the world’s first autonomous micro-factory, designed to help eliminate middle-mile logistics to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, water waste and plastic pollution. This process launched in March with the introduction of SE Grocers Party Cubes, a cubed ice made efficiently, locally and on-demand for select locations.

For more information about SEG’s sustainability efforts and to view the grocer’s 2022 ESG report, visit segrocers.com/sustainability.

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