GM's Corner: Putting Sustainability Front & Center Is the Future of the Co-op

by 
Jon Roesser, Weavers Way General Manager

Anyone else remember those pictures from the waning days of the Cold War, the ones that appeared in Newsweek and Time of those dreary Soviet-era supermarkets? 

Aisle after aisle of barren shelves, stocked only here and there with a dozen or so cans of this or that Russian vegetable. No products on the shelves meant no shoppers in the stores, though the photographers always seemed to find an ancient babushka pushing a rusty old shopping cart (which was also, invariably, empty). 

In stark contrast was Superfresh, where I worked as a teenage clerk. At Superfresh, the shelves were always full of tens of thousands of every conceivable product. Every night, an 18-wheeler would back into the loading dock, groaning under the weight of pallets filled with everything we needed to make sure the shelves would be just as full the next day. Every day. In perpetuity. 

The U.S. food system is a marvel. Giant farms, orchards, feedlots, fishing fleets, all working both in competition and in consort to supply every market in every part of our country with an overabundance of food. Growers, producers, wholesalers and retailers all do their part to ensure that the American consumer not only never goes hungry, but never wants for anything. 

This system of ours, and similar systems in the rest of the developed world, are the envy of countries like China, India, Nigeria and dozens of others, who are striving to duplicate it on ever-growing scales. 

Too bad it’s all hopelessly unsustainable. 

To meet consumer needs, our current food system behaves in ways that are harmful to the planet. Factory farms strip the soil of its nutrients and pollute the groundwater. Livestock feeding operations produce massive quantities of methane and ammonia. Fishing fleets, trolling international waters where regulations and oversight are sparse, overfish countless species, disrupting the sea’s natural food chain. 

The network of producers, wholesalers and retailers set up to supply consumers is inherently inefficient, wasteful and dependent on plastics, pesticides and fossil fuels.

I don’t have enough room to go into how our food system treats animals and farm workers. 

Whether we like it or not, Weavers Way is inextricably tied to this unsustainable system. Walk through our stores and you’ll see our dependence on plastic packaging. A small town could be powered on the amount of electricity we need to keep all of our refrigeration humming. And those bananas and coffee beans we sell might be Fair Trade, but they still have to travel thousands of miles to get onto our shelves. 

Our beloved Co-op is, regrettably, part of the problem, and all the good work we do doesn’t absolve us of this truth. 

Responsible management of the Co-op means looking out not just for the best interests of today’s members, but for tomorrow’s members too. So, following the lead of the National Co-op Grocers, the trade group of which Weavers Way is one of about 150 members, we have signed on to the Climate Collaborative, a Paris climate accord of sorts for companies across the natural-foods industry working towards improved environmental stewardship. 

Our focus in the coming years will be in five key areas:

Energy Efficiency. Upgrade less efficient equipment; capture and reuse heat generated by our refrigeration system. 

Food Waste. Better coordination of departments to reduce the amount of “shrink” (as it’s called in industry parlance). 

Packaging. Emphasize our bulk departments and explore more sustainable packaging for our prepared foods and meat and seafood departments. 

Policy. Make a more active role in influencing policy makers on environmental issues. 

Renewable Energy. Work toward 100 percent use of renewable energies to power our retail operations and vehicle fleet. 

In committing to the Climate Collaborative, Weavers Way acknowledges that longstanding practices cannot be permanently sustained. We acknowledge that, going forward, we need to do better. 

In taking this step, the Co-op joins a growing list of states, cities, universities and corporations that are determined that the United States must not cede the leadership role in addressing climate change. 

Our current president’s rejection of the Paris Agreement (troubling, but hardly surprising) is pure political pander, a sop to his supporters and a reminder to the rest of us that many, many Americans believe that when it comes to our stewardship of the planet, we needn’t change a thing. 

Back in the days of those empty-shelved Soviet supermarkets, there were plenty of Russians who thought they didn’t need to change anything either. How’d that turn out? 

Our next president will right this wrong. In the meantime, there’s plenty for the rest of us to do. 

See you around the Co-op.