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wood, California, we have the Brentwood corn that’s growing two miles down the road. That vendor just delivers it every day to the store instead of working it through our sys- tem,” White explains, noting local vendor relationships going back 70 years.
The process has to be managed very care- fully for two major reasons. The first is just from the food safety aspects. “We have worked with certain local growers to make sure they fit the criteria, and we visit them before the season and periodically during the season,” says White.
“Our quality control team goes out in the field, and we test their products,” adds Burn- ham. Supplier interest really picked up last year with the heightened awareness to local.
New suppliers or suppliers with limited sup- ply will reach out to Safeway’s procurement team in Phoenix. “We have different people associated with or responsible for specific crops and products, and we get them hooked up with the right people,” he says. “Then we’ll actually go out and visit them, spend time in their fields, bring our quality control team and then we’ll utilize limited supply for selected stores.” It doesn’t always have to be counted as local, says Burnham, noting that taking care of local farmers is part of Safe- way’s sustainability culture.
White adds, “We stay in the deal as long as we possibly can to help those growers sell through their products.” In many ways, it’s complicated procurement. “It’s not easy,” says
White, “but we’re really committed to it.” “I’ve never had a more complex assign- ment because of that,” says Burnham. “And then added to that is the complexity in regards to organic, local, conventional, but then the quality components, the variety components, the Mother Nature components and then the promotional components — it takes an army
to stay on top if it!”
Recycling Responsibilities
Burnham certainly speaks from experi- ence. He started with Safeway in the stores 20 years ago as an apprentice meat cutter, ulti- mately becoming the group director in meat, then in a new sustainable effort four years ago, launching a separate seafood unit as vice pres-
Safeway’s Unsung Green Heroes
Safeway’s vast CSR and sustainabil- ity efforts touch everyone throughout the company, and Best Practices are spread across all divisions and operations. While some areas may seem peripheral to the produce industry, most have challenges directly or indirectly affecting produce ini- tiatives. In terms of the produce industry, Safeway’s team is bustling with unsung green heroes.
Jeff Brown, CIH, Director Environmental Affairs, explains the sheer scale of sustain- ability programs underway:
• The total amount of recycled card- board, including all Safeway stores, supply plants and distribution centers, which col- lects it from the stores, amounted to 300,000 tons last year. That includes dry and non-wax cardboard received, basically from the packaging of products, the ship- ping packaging, cartons, etc.
• Waxed cardboard is used to collect compostable produce, floral and deli items that aren’t sold at stores. The total amount of material collected and composted last year was 110,000 tons.
• The plastics recycling number hit around 13,300 tons.
• Overall, Safeway recycled nearly 520,000 tons of materials.
Safeway’s progressive posturing puts the retailer ahead of the curve, which could be critical, especially in California as new regu- lations and stricter standards come down the pike. “It’s starting in California, but it will
spread to other parts of the country,” says Brown. For example, Green Chemistry, modeled after European systems that look at chemical composition of products and the hazards of those chemicals in any prod- uct, such as those for cleaning, is certainly on the near horizon in California,” he says. “It’s nice to be ahead of the curve in some of these things. We certainly are plugged in and get advance notice of impending rules.”
Making something more safe or reduc- ing water is certainly a valued sustainabil- ity measure at Safeway. At the same time, solutions to problems are not always so clear-cut. The EPA started to phase out refrigerants that were causing damage to the ozone layer, so Safeway phased those out at a fairly rapid rate in many areas. Available replacements were HFCs [refrig- erant comprised of Hydrogen, Fluorine and Carbon], which seemed a good choice at the time, Brown explains. “Now you have to also consider that HFCs may have been slightly less efficient so you have to use more electricity to do the same refrig- eration; in that sense it increases the amount of global warming. In the new global warming regimes, we’re going to have to deal with that,” Brown continues.
Bio-diesel conversion for all the trucks was another expensive venture. “We went out ahead of the curve and converted to bio-diesel,” says Brown. “There’s nothing inherently wrong with bio-diesel, but the underground tanks to hold it were not certi- fied to hold it. The process in California to
get them certified is lengthy and bureau- cratic, so here we are with bio-diesel and basically nowhere to put it,” Brown explains.
Getting the bio-diesel fuel wasn’t all that easy either, according to Joe Pettus, senior vice president, fuel and energy. The fuel itself wasn’t consistent, and getting it to Safeway’s specifications and quality was very difficult. Pettus admits that Safeway had to back off on the use of bio-diesel trucks because the bio-diesel industry is still not cohesive enough yet to supply such a big customer.
Safeway is a big grocery company, but also a big energy company; Energy is Safe- way’s second largest cash expense, other than personnel, explains Pettus. “We are one of, if not the largest commercial con- sumer of electricity in the state of Califor- nia, so we have a huge energy load; we air- condition 24/7 and what we don’t air con- dition, we refrigerate, and what we don’t refrigerate, we freeze, and if we’re going to freeze it, we heat it,” he exclaims.
“We went out and bought our own nat- ural gas, went to the power plants and said, just turn it into electricity; I’ll buy the gas, you turn it into electricity — we’ve become our own utility, so it saves us a lot of money,” he says, describing somewhat of a coup, extending the strategy to Canada and any state in the United States that allows it. “We’re basically either acquiring our own energy directly, or manufacturing it, or both.” One big advantage, “If I make too much electricity, I can sell it to someone
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