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When you put together the words "green" and "grocery store," you mostly likely think of vegetables like lettuce, celery or broccoli. But, some local grocery stores are going “green” without the produce. KSMU’s Kristian Kriner reports.
Price Cutter grocery stores in Springfield are implementing several new practices to make the stores more eco-friendly.
Some of the changes include composting expired food, installing energy efficient light bulbs and donating old deli oil for bio-diesel fuel.
Ron Calton is the vice president of operation and store services.
He says Price Cutter is the first grocery store in Springfield to compost all food waste.“We don’t have every thing taking place in every store today, but the initiatives are under way to get the ball rolling, so that we start getting there as quickly as we can. There are some of them that are company wide like the bag recycling and they’re working very hard to try to make that happen as quickly as we can,” Calton said.
Calton took me around the Price Cutter on South National, pointing out what has already been implemented in that store.
We start out in the deli, where old oil is donated to a company that uses it to make bio-diesel fuel.“This is actually the funnel system for the deli oil. It comes in a container like this, so when they change the oil out they take the container that the oil is in, pump it right back in here. It goes right back into this container again. So, the other side of that is you’re using a plastic container twice as opposed to having something else to put it in,” Calton said.
Calton says Price Cutter recycles 99 percent of the plastic and cardboard packaging that the food arrives in.
He says the grocery store chain is also selling reusable cloth bags, giving consumers an alternative to plastic grocery bags.
“I don’t know that there are going to be a lot of things that we are doing that’s going to actually change the customer’s shopping experience when they come in. It’s just going to be something that we’re doing to benefit everyone and so whether they recognize this as being a benefit or not, we hope that in the long run they gain something out of it,” Calton said.
Calton says the Price Cutter in Springfield will be implementing these “green” practices within the next couple of months.
For KSMU News, I’m Kristian Kriner.
