A "green" comment we get from shoppers is about the packaging of food bought in fresh food areas, like our Market Café and Produce Depts. We wanted you to know that we’re working on this, and that changes are being made. A recent step: change all the Asian Wokery Bar food containers (the little red boxes) from pure, bleached paper to those made of 100% recycled paper (35% is post consumer paper; the rest is scrap paper generated during manufacturing). The new boxes perform just like the “old” ones; only the color now is “Kraft” or brown. On the salad and food bars, we’re adding a “green” choice; a similar material of 100% recycled paper. We’ll be watching for customer reaction and would love your feedback.

All our merchants and buyers are working toward newer alternatives. A month ago, we had a two-day packaging summit to examine all the materials used throughout the company (it was a roomful!). The objective was to see where we could reduce packaging containers by either elimination or sharing similar ones across multiple departments. Next in priority was to determine where packaging could be made using a renewable resource (like recycled paper or sources like sugar cane or grasses as in our fish fry containers). Then, to consider where the type of plastic could be shifted to materials customers could put into curbside recycling. In most areas where our stores are, there is recycling of codes #1 (PET) or #2 (HDPE).

Packaging material costs are way, way up (with the price of oil and shipping), so there is great incentive to reduce costs as well as do things that have positive environmental impact.