Earth Day Briefing: Coke, Pepsi, Whole Foods, Target, Caribou Coffee

by | Apr 20, 2012

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It’s that time of year again. In celebration of Earth Day on April 22 companies have been unveiling green initiatives all over the place. Here’s a selection of those that caught our eye.

Whole Foods Market has announced that it will become the first national retailer to no longer carry “red-rated” wild-caught seafood in its fresh cases. “Red rated” seafood are species deemed to be suffering from overfishing or those whose current fishing methods harm other marine life. Whole Foods hopes the move will help to reverse the trend of overfishing and “bycatch.”

Covanta Energy, the nation’s largest operator of energy-from-waste facilities, is partnering with Call2Recycle to collect used rechargeable batteries and cell phones for recycling. The program is part of Covanta’s Clean World Initiative, a company-wide sustainability movement that works to remove potentially harmful materials from the waste stream.

Free coffee! That’s what all reusable cup-toting customers that visit Caribou Coffee on Earth Day will be rewarded with. Caribou is also partnering with Project 7 to plant a fruit tree for every pack of Project 7 gum or mints purchased at Caribou Coffee now through April 30. As part of this, Project 7 will plant trees in Haiti and El Salvador in August 2012.

Coca-Cola is partnering with River Network to donate more than 1,000 syrup drums for reuse as rain barrels (pictured) in communities all across the country. With these 1,000 new donations, Coca-Cola says it will have provided more than 22,000 syrup drums to be used as rain barrels in the U.S. since 2008. The rain barrels will ease strain on municipal water supplies to the tune of an estimated 60 million gallons of water each year, the company says.

Not to be outdone, Coke rival PepsiCo has released a report in time for Earth Day, detailing progress of its Dream Machine recycling initiative that will be two years old on Earth Day 2012. In that time, the program’s recycling efforts have diverted almost 94 million plastic bottles and aluminum cans from landfill and conserved nearly 126,390 million BTUs of energy, Pepsi says.

Retail giant Target is to distribute 1.5 million reusable bags in all of its stores on Earth Day itself. The store is also offering customers more than $50 in savings on sustainable products throughout April and is to partner with Recyclebank, an organization that promotes sustainable decisions by allowing individuals to earn rewards for actions like recycling and reducing water use.

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