Having been a solution provider to virtually every industry on earth, I have come to recognize that the grocery industry as a whole is relatively conservative. New technologies, solutions, and business models are simply not embraced and adopted overnight. And frankly, until recently, I believed the same could be said about sustainability (see recent blog post). So I was pleasantly surprised during last week’s Food Marketing Institute Sustainability Summit to see the strides that grocers are making towards more sustainable operations.

Yes, it’s easy to find grocery chains with new LEED buildings, improved lighting and more efficient refrigeration. But what is truly heartening is the extent to which real progress is being made among the products on store shelves. Many grocers are looking to expand their selection of organics, some with private label offerings. And many are taking a hard look at their sourcing policies in important areas like sustainable seafood practices. Futhermore, several leading grocers are helping their customers understand which products are environmentally preferable through shelf tags. In my view, more responsible sourcing combined with improved customer education are critical steps towards enabling more responsible consumerism.

Another area of increasing activity among grocers is around the “bag issue”. Based on at least 30 conversations that I had with grocers during the Sustainability Summit, it’s clear that grocers realize that they need to go beyond providing a discount for use of reusable bags. Nearly every grocer has a committee looking at new programs that they can put in place to significantly impact the use of reusable bags at their stores.

Clearly, leaders in the grocery industry have begun to recognize that their responsibility extends to the products on their shelves and the buying behaviors of their customers. With this new mindset, we can expect great strides to be made by the grocery industry over the coming months and years.

On the eve of the Food Marketing Institute’s Sustainability Summit, I feel compelled to point out the importance of adopting sustainable products and processes by grocery retailers.  Certainly some have heeded the call and have made sustainability a hallmark of their operations. But too many grocers continue to hold on to the outdated belief that they are simply a middle man between product manufacturers and their customers.

Increasingly, the evidence points to the fact that consumer buying habits are a reflection of their values. The widely publicized Cone Survey shows that fully 90% of Americans consider themselves “conscious consumers”. Not only do they want to purchase products from manufacturers that reflect their values, they want to buy from retailers who reflect these same values. The entire value chain - from raw materials to packaging and production to the point of sale - is under scrutiny by the increasingly conscious consumer. As the Hartman Group so effectively tells us, it’s not just what they buy, it’s where they buy it.

If you don’t believe me, take a look at what Greenpeace is doing to Trader Joe’s.  With its website and series of email campaigns entitled “Traitor Joe’s”, Greenpeace is exposing Trader Joes’ irresponsible seafood sourcing practices. How long can a grocery retailer - already hit with reduced consumer spending amid historically razor thin margins - afford to maintain unsustainable practices? The answer is obvious, and it’s equally obvious that grocers need to get ahead of the game by rapidly adopting more sustainable practices throughout their operations.

By the way, if fear is not motivation enough, the fact that sustainability-minded consumers spend significantly more than the average consumer at the grocery store should be enough to move smart grocers in the right direction.

When was the last time you took part in a creek clean up?  It had been a while since my last one, so I thought it would be worthwhile to spend some time cleaning up my community and learning about the state of the waterways. Wow, was it educational.

Over the past 18 months I have participated in countless meetings on disposable bags - the paper and plastic bags that are commonly provided at grocery stores and other retailers. The environmental side will tell you about the horrible toll that these bags - in particular the plastic - take on our environment. They will site studies that show the volume of plastic bags in our waterways and the thousands of birds and sea creatures that die every year from these bags. The other side - typically made up of a few lobbyists from the plastics industry -  are quick to call into question those studies, reminding us of the convenience that these bags provide us in our everyday lives. They claim that bags are only a tiny fraction of the waste that pollutes our streets and waterways.

So I thought a little time spent in a local creek might shed some light on exactly who is right. What I saw in Stevens Creek was crystal clear: it’s true that by weight plastic bags make up only a minor percentage of waste, but by quantity they were easily 40% of all the waste items we removed! Not only were they numerous, they were in various phases of degradation, resulting in thousands of tiny bits of plastic. Since this stuff never fully decays, it’s easy to see how it is ingested by wildlife or will eventually wash out to sea, ending up in the gigantic plastic swamp in the Pacific.

So, to answer the question, plastic bags are a real problem. And at a consumption rate of 500 billion plastic bags per year globally, they are a huge problem. I am more convinced than ever that we need to get rid of non-biodegradable plastic bags entirely…and while we’re at it, we need to get rid of the wasteful and energy-intensive paper bags as well. It’s time that consumers be rewarded for making reusable bags an everyday habit.