The Green Grocers

2007 looks likely to be a year of green and ethical consolidation for many supermarkets.

For many of us the concept of a Green grocer has been quickly forgotten. Here in the UK a recent competition enquiry has found that although the biggest names do indeed control up to '75% of the market', they are not stifling competition. Whilst many feel that this issue is still up for debate, the Competition Comission is moving to look further into the issue, to examine their effect on local shops and local farmers both of whom are equally responsibe to price concerns.

Supermarkets, like Tesco, have value plots of land and mindshare, along with incentive schemes giving them a high street-by-high street understanding of their customers. Over the last year it has been very obvious that many of them see green initiatives as crucial to their status as part of the high street. In a strange way, their connection to each local community has given them advance warning of this overall trend to eco realisation - a kind of widespread understand of where food comes from and how it reaches our high street. In a sense, it is possible that the new Green Grocers are the Tesco and ASDA that we see in every high street in the UK. And whilst they are identikit shops on the outside, inside they employ staff from the local community and stock the shelves with food and offers that their customer databases know will sell.

However, whilst the supermarkets may look like community hubs, their green initiatives are typically boombastic, headline grabbing affairs. When it comes to going green, they go green big. Tesco, in the USA, plans to build the "world's biggest solar roof", whilst Marks & Spencer "plans to go green", in a big fashion:

"The announced commitment by Marks & Spencer, which is the U.K.'s largest clothing retailer, would be the equivalent of taking 100,000 cars off the road. The company's 100-point action plan also aims to stop sending waste to landfill sites by 2012, to increase the amount of food sourced locally and regionally, to increase the use of recycled materials and to end the need for consumers to throw away any of its products or packaging."

Elsewhere, Wal-Mart plans to cut packaging by 5%, a small and reserved number when compared to the Tesco and M&S annoucements, but 5% of Wal-Mart packaging is no doubt several thousand barges full of rubbish destined for landfill. Whilst it's impressive that a company like Tesco will admit that its' carbon footprint is around 2 milion tonnes of C02 a year, there's an inevitable sense of one-upmanship here, an annoucement with a nod to the inevitable future annoucement of reduction. Tesco, seemingly in response, plans to "put carbon ratings on labels", grabbing hold of the esteemed Oxford University as it does so.

This year, it would be nice to think that the supermarkets could tone down the green rhetoric and tune into the community spirit. Their ubiquity has made them replacement green grocers, their special offers in step with the locals purchasing habits. No one is really impressed by their worlds-largest this, or 10,0000 that nonsense. It's detrimental to their green and ethical ambitions because it's so unattainable and incomprehensible for most of us, and what we want from the big supermarkets is to make the big picture relevant and, dare I say it, digestible. Wouldn't it be great if they could encourage and educate us on a more local level, store by store? Reply to this discussion / Report this discussion
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