Giant Food Stores Creeps Closer to Waste Reduction Goals with One Store’s Success

Giant Food Stores, a Carlisle, Pa.-based grocer with more than 170 neighborhood locations, announced that one of its stores has achieved zero-waste status; its Cleona store has taken the company’s waste reduction goals seriously and is the chain’s first to achieve 90% or more of waste diverted to landfill.

The company says it plans to have 90% of all its stores’ food waste diverted from landfill by 2020. In 2016, the company was diverting 73% of all food waste generated by its stores.

Employees at the Cleona store got serious about recycling procedures in 2012, when the grocery chain focused on waste reduction best practices at the corporate level. Store management now monitors material sent to the trash compactor to track when potentially recyclable materials are being thrown away. They also designate bins for food waste and collect plastic bags and other plastics waste which they send to the retailer’s recycling center.

The store’s “green captain” says employees have embraced the efforts and changed the store’s culture to achieve the zero waste goal.

Giant Food Stores also focuses on other environmentally responsible initiatives, including energy reduction and sustainable food sourcing, the company says.

Other grocery chains are successfully focusing on zero waste, as well. Last spring, Wegmans Food Markets expanded its Zero Waste program to five store locations following a successful one-store pilot in Canandaigua, New York. The regional grocery store chain headquartered in Rochester, New York, launched the pilot program in 2016. Wegmans is working with cloud-based waste and recycling solutions provider Rubicon Global to eliminate all forms of waste at its stores. The chain has committed to reducing food loss and waste by 50% by 2030.

In 2017, hundreds of Hy-Vee stores in Illinois were offering discounts for “misfit” fruits and vegetables to keep them from going to waste. The stores worked with global produce company Robinson Fresh on the misfit line, which included fresh but less-than-perfect looking fruits and vegetables including apples, avocados, lemons, oranges, cucumbers and clementines.

The Illinois grocers also donate food to local food pantries while recycling unusable foods like spoiled produce.

Getting It Done: Vendors Mentioned Above

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