The greening of supermarkets

Luis of the Fresh Produce Industry Discussion Group passes on this link to the "story of stuff" by activist Annie Leonard. Her Web site describes a "system in crisis" and is a good insight to the passion of sustainability. A true believer.

In England, the National Consumer Council said this in October about the "greening" of supermarkets in the UK, with similar passion. From the NCC:

NCC’s findings indicate that sustainability is fast becoming a mass-market phenomenon – with even lower-end retailers embracing a greener approach.

Sainsbury’s now heads NCC’s annual league table alongside M&S and Waitrose – all were given a B rating. Asda and Tesco made progress over the past year – moving from a D to a C. Perhaps most significant of all in terms of long-term trends, Morrisons and Somerfield have improved their scores from an E to a D.

TK: Here is the link to the 30-page pdf NCC report on "Greener: how supermarkets can make greener shopping easier," The report describes how supermarkets were graded in various respects, relative to waste, organic sales, energy use and others.

They also had commentary - but did not score - "the relative reliance on carbon intensive produce." From the report:

Using aggregate UK fruit import data from HM Revenue and Customs, we compared supermarkets on the full range of fruit they stock and promote, assessing how far the fruit has travelled and how likely it is that this fruit will have been airfreighted.This information gives a useful snapshot of each supermarket’s relative reliance on carbon-intensive produce, as well
as giving information on how much produce comes from less wealthy countries.


TK: Supermarkets must resist the urge to achieve the best "sustainability" score from this group or another. They must be accountable to their shareholders and to their consumers. In many cases, that will mean going 'greener" according to one definition or another. But in other respects - such as the suggestion that importing produce from around the globe to meet consumer demand is somehow wrong-headed - the goals of "sustainability" are at odds with the interests of consumers and of merchants.