green day(s) at fresh & easy

Not a reference to the punk(?) boys (have they been heard of since Springfield?).

Rather, Earth Day's around the corner, so I was pleased we're going to be bagging groceries that day in our reusable "Bag for Life". With so much disagreement around the merits of plastic or paper, encouraging reusable bags seems to me entirely sensible. And our "Bag for Life", though plastic, is replaceable for free, forever. Just think how many carrier bags that could save!

I hope Christy from Bring Me Up: Environment will be there. If nothing else, she can check out the hybrid parking spaces.

Of course, it's not just about taking action on Earth Day. We need to change the way we live everyday to make it more sustainable. And that's what we've tried to do in developing fresh&easy.

We've partnered with green-minded organizations such as the California Climate Action Registry and Resource Management Group to help with our efforts. We’re also working with LEED to build green wherever possible: we think our buildings already use about 30% less energy than a typical grocery store.

Transit packaging and display materials are always a potential source of waste in our kind of business. So we recycle or reuse all of them, and recently announced our new UV Sanitation process for cleaning the materials.

Now, I can't say such technical details normally rock my boat, but I found this fascinating. To read more about it, check out the Good Clean Tech blog.

Of course, I wouldn't claim we're perfect. But we do believe in being good neighbors, who care about the environment. We figure the more effort we put to such initiatives, the better it will be for everyone...

And that, in our view, is how it should be…