From Green Right Now Reports

Star Market at Chestnut Hill in Newton, Mass., recently became the first grocery store in the nation to receive US Environmental Protection Agency’s GreenChill Partnership platinum store award. The advanced refrigeration technology in the new store, which is part of the Shaw’s line of supermarkets, significantly reduces its impact on climate change and the stratospheric ozone layer by cutting the use of refrigerants by 85 percent compared with the typical supermarket.

Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, called the store’s efforts “wicked cool.”

“This store shows that smart design and advanced technologies help us right now to better protect our climate, the ozone layer, and our health,” McCarthy said in a statement.

The GreenChill Advanced Refrigeration Partnership is an EPA cooperative alliance with the supermarket industry to promote advanced technologies, strategies, and practices that reduce refrigerant charges and emissions of ozone-depleting substances and greenhouse gases.

GreenChill partners emit about 50 percent less emissions than the industry average, and have pledged to continually lower them as part of the program. EPA estimates that if every supermarket in the nation joined GreenChill and reduced emissions to the current GreenChill average, the U.S. would prevent 22 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and 240 tons of ozone-depleting substances annually, and save $108 million in refrigerant costs each year. GreenChill has 46 partners, with more than 6,500 retail food stores in 47 states.

Under the program, GreenChill Partner stores agree to:

• Transition to non-ozone-depleting refrigerants;
• Reduce refrigerant charges;
• Reduce both ozone-depleting and greenhouse gas refrigerant emissions; and
• Promote supermarkets’ adoption of advanced refrigeration technologies

Earlier this year, the EPA honored a handful of supermarkets for reducing their use of greenhouse gas refrigerants that deplete the Earth’s ozone layer and contribute to climate change. Awardees included  Sprouts Farmers Market, Whole Foods, and Hill Phoenix.

Sprouts Farmers Market, which owns stores across California, Arizona, Colorado, and Texas, received a New Partner Award.

New partners pledge to go above and beyond regulatory requirements by measuring and tracking refrigerant emissions that affect climate change and the Earth’s ozone layer, and then setting reduction targets for these emissions. Partners also agree to use only ozone-friendly alternatives in all new and remodeled stores.

“We look forward to a productive and mutually beneficial partnership with Sprouts Farmers Market,” Keilly Witman, GreenChill Program Manager, said in a statement. “The public wants to do business with companies that share their environmental values. By joining GreenChill, Sprouts Farmers Market is proving to consumers that they care about the Earth’s ozone layer and climate system.”

Whole Foods Market’s newest store in the North Atlantic Region, located at Legacy Place in Dedham, Mass., was recognized for its environmentally friendly design, construction, and operations with the Green Building Initiative’s (GBI) Green Globes certification and the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) GreenChill certification.

For the Green Globes certification, the Dedham store was evaluated in six categories, including energy, water, resources, emissions, indoor environment and environmental management systems, and received a three out of four “Green Globes” rating. The EPA’s GreenChill certification program promotes advanced technologies, strategies, and practices that reduce refrigerant charges and emissions of ozone-depleting substances and greenhouse gases.

“With the combined power generated from our fuel cell and solar panels, the Dedham store is essentially able to generate almost 100 percent of its power needs on-site with clean energy resources,” Kathy Loftus, global leader of sustainable engineering, maintenance, and energy for Austin-based Whole Foods, said in a statement. “We are the first supermarket to use fuel cell technology in the state.”

By generating most of its power on-site with a fuel cell, Whole Foods’ Dedham store will prevent the release of more than 764 metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere annually, the equivalent of planting more than 175 acres of trees and removing over 90 cars from the road, according to the natural foods grocer. The peak power generated from the photovoltaic (PV) solar energy system is enough to meet the store’s entire lighting power needs.

To achieve a Green Globes rating, Whole Foods used Green Globes’ online and interactive program to monitor the environmentally friendly building upgrades. A GBI-authorized third-party building science expert was engaged to review the building documents, conduct an on-site inspection and assess an official Green Globes rating.

A robin may be the mascot for the Red Robin restaurant chain, but chickens are the birds getting a big break from the company.

Red Robin Gourmet Burgers has more than 300 company-owned restaurants, and they are swiftly moving away from the use of eggs produced by hens that live in torturous conditions at factory farms across the country.

Photo: Humane Society of the United States

Hens in ‘battery cages’ by Compassion Over Killing

Right now, about one-third of the eggs in the Red Robin supply chain are “cage-free,” and they intend to have 100 percent of the eggs they serve come from cage-free hens by 2010, the company says.

Red Robin is moving quickly, but other large restaurant chains – Burger King, Denny’s, Wendy’s, Quiznos, Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. among them — are moving away from eggs produced by hens kept in “battery cages.”

The vast majority of factory farm chickens in America – about 280 million – live in those cruel cages, according to the Humane Society of the United States. Battery doesn’t refer to electricity, but rather to the large number, or “battery,” of chickens crammed together in a mesh enclosure the size of a file drawer. Each hen’s living space is the size of a piece of letter-size paper. The birds cannot stand, stretch their wings, walk or nest. Their cages are stacked one atop the other in warehouse-sized buildings. They live this way for more than a year, then they are slaughtered.

The horrible conditions lead to slowed production and illness, so they are usually killed before they turn 2. A laying hen’s normal lifespan is 7 years.

The Humane Society has a video on the subject, if you can stomach it.

Those birds are among the most abused animals in the factory farm industry, said Paul Shapiro, senior director of the Factory Farming Campaign of the national Humane Society.

Photo: Humane Society of the United States

‘Cage-free’ egg farm

“Cage-free hens are able to walk around, spread their wings, lay eggs in nests,” he said. They are still enclosed, but it is a huge improvement over battery cages. “Red Robin has taken an important step toward improving animal welfare in their supply chain,” Shapiro said.

American companies started to eschew battery cage eggs in 2005, when the Whole Foods grocery chain refused to sell them, he said. “Then Trader Joe’s (another large grocery chain) implemented a policy to make their private label eggs cage-free. Ben & Jerry’s, which uses eggs in every carton of ice cream, has committed to going 100 percent cage-free. We’ve also seen a number of universities and high schools – nearly 400 in the U.S. – go partially to entirely with cage-free eggs in their cafeterias.”

Wolfgang Puck only uses meat and eggs from animals raised under strict welfare codes. Even Walmart is offering cage-free eggs.

This May, the big fish of fast food, McDonald’s, said it is launching a study aimed at creating alternative, more humane forms of hen housing, according to media reports. Unfortunately, that doesn’t translate into a swift change to cruelty-free eggs, but it’s a start.

The demand for cage-free eggs is forcing the egg industry to adapt. “A few years ago, 98 percent of egg-laying hens were in battery cages. Now that number is 94 percent,” Shapiro said, and that percentage will continue to drop. “We’ve seen that most egg producers now have both cage and cage-free production. Before, that wasn’t the case.”

Photo: Humane Society of the United States

Pig in ‘gestational crate’

Susan Lintonsmith joined Red Robin in 2007 as chief marketing officer, and she worked to establish an animal welfare policy. Consumers were getting more concerned with the way factory farm animals are treated, so Red Robin paired with groups such as the Humane Society of the U.S. to develop their policy.

How many eggs are we talking about? Red Robin said they serve about 4.2 million eggs a year.

On their corporate Web site, Burger King says they used cage-free eggs on more than 2 million Croissan’wich breakfast sandwiches. They would use more, but they cite limited commercial supply (a complaint reiterated by other large food retailers).

It’s not just hens who are hurting. Other animals raised for food are subjected to “intensive confinement” practices in America’s factory farms. Pigs destined for the kitchen or restaurant are forced to live in “gestation crates” – small, 2-foot-wide cages barely larger than the pig’s body, the Humane Society’s Shapiro said. “The pigs are confined in that space for several months while they are pregnant. They are unable to even turn around,” he said.

“This type of cruelty has been criminalized in six states and the entire European Union has banned it as well,” Shapiro said.

The first state to take action was California. In November of last year, voters there resoundingly backed – with 63.5 percent of the vote — an initiative to prevent animal farm cruelty. Their law says that certain animals on farms much have room to stand up, move around and stretch their limbs.

Photo: Humane Society of the United States

Pigs in ‘group housing’

For pigs, the new living conditions are referred to as “group housing,” where they are kept in pens that allow them to walk around.

That translates into nearly 20 million hens, pigs and calves with improved living conditions. “That’s the biggest advancement for farm animals in U.S. history,” said Erin Williams, a spokesperson for the Humane Society. Another five states have begun to take steps against these inhumane environments.

Even though retailers are talking more about cruelty-free food from farms, and leaning on producers to change their processes, battery cages and gestation crates are still the predominant form of animal containment in America.

Photo: Humane Society of the United States

Veal calves in small crates

Pressure has been on veal producers for years, to the point that the top two veal producers in the nation have stopped holding calves in 2-foot-wide wooden crates where they’re chained by the neck and can’t turn. Their muscles atrophy to the point that many cannot walk. Those veal factory farms now have calves living in group housing, where they can move around and socialize.

Lest you think that a move to “cage-free” or “group housing” environments is akin to life on Old MacDonald’s Farm, Shapiro cautions that these roomier facilities do not mean that the animals are living “cruelty-free.” They are still contained, not free to roam large or outdoor spaces. They suffer other cruel treatment at the hands of large factory farms.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Harvesting daylight is an ancient trick – as old as the first man-made structure, as old as life on our planet, actually. Using the sunlight provided by nature is the most basic and simple way to illuminate one’s world. But when it comes to modern, sustainable architecture, the idea is relatively young.

Only in recent times has “daylighting,” as it’s sometimes called, made a blip on the broader green movement’s radar, with industry experts speculating that fewer than 1 percent of all U.S. buildings use natural light in a substantive manner (going beyond windows). The 21st century approach is waaaay more technologically involved than, say, a prehistoric clan setting up its fire pit next to the cave entrance.

More from GRN

Slideshow: Lighting with natural daylight

“In a layman’s terms, daylighting – which was our original term for it – is the process of bringing natural sunlight into a building and distributing it so you can turn the electric lights off,” says Bruce Bilbrey, co-owner of the Natural Lighting Co in Phoenix, founded in 1990 by his brother, Paul Bilbrey. (See the photo above of Frito Lay offices in Arizona — lit totally by daylight.)

“It’s not using the sun to create power to run the lights. It’s not a solar electric system. It’s using the sunlight directly. You use it with lighting controls, so that the lights can be off when there’s an adequate amount of daylight in the space.”

Bilbrey says the technology involves installation of skylights and reflective “lightwells” that architecturally bend lighting into a space, then, via large lenses and diffusers, deflect the light around. The company’s various systems can be used in residential and commerical spaces, and, depending on a building’s size, ceiling heights, lighting requirements and other needs, different types of diffusers and are employed.

“In very basic terms, it’s solar lighting. We call it simple solar,” Bilbrey explains. “But it’s not the same as having a skylight, which is just a feature on the roof where the light kind of comes in and goes where it wants – though the whole process does (use) ‘skylights.’”

Over the past several years, he and others in the business, such as Lighting Control & Design in Glendale, Calif., have noted a steady rise in the harvesting and harnessing of natural solar goodness. By doing so, “daylighting” converts don’t just save on energy bills and carbon output; they increase productivity among workers and create a healthier indoor environment that can lift spirits as well as enhance mental prowess. (This picture shows a daylight system at a charter school in San Diego.)

Daylighting even helps boost retail sales, studies show.

Large retailers including Whole Foods Market, Kohl’s, Target, Wal-Mart and JC Penney now use solar lighting (known generically as light, or daylight, harvesting) in many of their stores, while corporations such as Frito Lay/Pepsi and branches of the U.S. military employ solar harvesting to shed light on multiple situations – provided the situation occurs during daylight hours.

“Solar lighting really only works during the day,” says Bilbrey, who along with his brother and co-founder James Hennessey works with retailers Whole Foods, Target and Safeway, as well as various schools, municipalities and military bases around the U.S.

“We manufacture and install Component Daylighting Systems, which don’t store light, like a solar electric system,” the Arizonan says. “But in many buildings, the (daytime) lighting load is 50 to 70 percent of total energy use. The lighting load in one gym we worked with was 70 percent of the energy used in that building.”

If you’re planning a traditional Thanksgiving, you’ll be needing a bird. This year, organic and pastured turkeys are more available than ever. Check your local grocery now, and get on a list if need be. If you really want to try something new, reserve an heirloom variety bird or try one that’s been pre-soaked in brine.

Here are some places to look for a turkey that’s been raised on organic feed, and allowed a more humane existence.

• Local Harvest — If you’re into local heirloom turkeys or other pedigree varieties you may be too late! But don’t beat yourself up over it, local farmers in Texas have told us that many connoisseurs place their orders months ahead of time. Still, there’s a flock of healthier birds waiting. You can order free-range, pastured, organic turkeys online and have them shipped. You’ll pay for the privilege of all those hormone-free, pesticide-free certifications — from $150 to $250 a bird. But these are BIG birds, and they’re freer of chemicals than you are, having been fed organic foods, no additives and animal byproducts. Local Harvest can also direct you to local farmers that sell direct to the public. The online marketplace also offers a panoply of pesticide-free fruits and veggies, including the requisite Thanksgiving cranberries.

• Mary’s Free Range Turkey in Fresno, California. These turkeys are sold locally and in a variety of markets across country. Mary’s touts its turkeys as having a better life than on many commercial farms. They are raised with four times more space on a diet of grains and veg proteins with no antibiotics, preservatives or additives, according to company literature. Rick Pitman, an owner of the 50-plus year old operation, told us last year that customers are increasingly concerned, not just with how organic turkey meat is healthier for them, but how the turkey was treated on the farm. See that article (”Don’t panic there’s still time to order organic“) for more help on sorting out all the turkey labels (organic, organically fed, cage-free) as you ponder what turkey permutation you need for the holiday feast. (Oh and vegetarians, please hold on, we’ll be running some great seasonal recipes from chefs around the country very soon.)

• Whole Foods Market — Our default healthy foods grocer is standing by this season with turkey choices that include birds raised on local family-owned and operated farms, including some heirloom varieties. Whole Foods also offers smoked, pre-brined fresh turkeys, and frozen turkeys. But no matter the type, all the turkeys offered at Whole Foods have been raised on “a vegetarian diet with no animal by-products and they have not been administered antibiotics,” said spokeswoman Cathy Cochran-Lewis. In addition, the organic turkeys have been fed grains that have not been treated with pesticides or herbicides. “Whole Foods Market’s quality standards take into account the comfort, physical safety and health of the turkeys that we offer,” she said. And after that, the palates of customers.  “The free-range and organic birds are our most popular, best-selling turkeys,” says Theo Weening, Whole Foods’ meat coordinator. “Our shoppers really love the flavor of these birds.” The store offers turkey cooking tips on its website.

Ms. Cochran-Lewis said it was too soon to gauge demand for organic and free-range turkeys this year; but a press release from the company notes that free-range and organic birds are the most popular turkeys — at Whole Foods. (They also offer advice on how to cook the roasted bird.)

As for the conventional grocers, organic and veg-fed turkeys are making appearances at Safeway, Kroger and other chains. Publix in the Southeastern United States is offering more through its GreenWise markets, which are freestanding or in-store areas targeting consumers who want natural and organic foods.

But overall, organic turkeys remain a small fraction of the market, according to industry spokespersons.

Related Stories

• Five vegetarian entrees for the Thanksgiving table
• Thinking turkey: Don’t panic, there’s still time to buy organic

Copyright © 2008 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Whole Foods announced today that it will stop making plastic bags available at checkout lines — aiming to use up existing stock quickly enough to be completely plastic-free by Earth Day, April 22.

This announcement, which applies to all 270 Whole Foods stores, follows a test run of the Bring Your Own Bag campaign in the company’s home town, Austin, Texas. During the Austin run, company spokesperson Kate Lowery says that customer response has been overwhelmingly positive. Some reports have recounted anecdotes about exceptions, like a disgruntled customer who liked to use Whole Foods plastic bags for household garbage, but according to Lowery: “The report that I got last night from the leadership at the store — they’re saying it’s all positive.”

The company intends to track the number of customers with reusable bags (since it offers a small discount for every customer-owned bag, tallying the number won’t be too difficult), and Lowery says they’ll be “waiting on those results.” She did offer some early examples of how consumer behavior is shifting toward greener practices:

• In San Francisco, where the city government banned plastic grocery bags, “we know that 20 percent of our shoppers are bringing in their reusables.”
• Today, an Atlanta location found that between opening and 1 pm of the program’s first day, “340 customers used about 1,100 reusable bags.”
• In Austin, “we’ve sold 10,000 of the Better Bags [the 99-cent tote made largely of recycled plastic bottles] in a month.”

Progress is slower on another plastic front — the bags the company (like all major grocery chains) still uses in its bulk, produce, and seafood departments. While Lowery says “we’ve started a task force” on that issue, “to find some eco-friendly options that work well for food safety and freshness,” no candidates have yet emerged. “Efficacy is key,” she says, explaining the difficulty of finding options that meet specialized needs, “but it’s something we’re committed to.”