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“We are very adamant that we will never compromise food safety or quali- ty, so we look for that balance where we can ensure safety and quality, and also provide more recy- clable packaging, or even sometimes, less packaging.”
— Michael Hewitt
many, many years. People are hopefully now used to seeing the typical green bag or Publix reusable bag that’s being sold for 99 cents. But, for many, many years before that, we were selling canvas bags.
Mira Slott: You were progressive here.
Maria Brous: Right. People are talking about using the bags as briefcases and gift bags, and catch-alls because not only are they making a statement, but they’re also being more user-friendly. But, we do different things to engage. Most recently, we engaged our school system in our market areas. We do a partnership with newspapers and educators. What we did this year to change up the NIE [Newspapers in Education, Troy, MI] pro- grams a little bit was to really involve kids. We understand that the next generation is becom- ing so much more important in the sustain- ability of our earth and our planet, and more kids are becoming green.
We targeted and engaged all sixth graders in our market area. We gave the teachers a whole NIE pullout on sustainability — about eating healthy, eating green, living green, sav- ing energy and being more efficient. It allowed teachers to develop a lesson plan.
We asked the sixth graders to design their own reusable bag and we had a contest. We will reveal the winning bag for Earth Day this
year. Each sixth-grade teacher will receive the reusable bag that we’ve had made based on this child’s rendering.
We really tried to get it from the grassroots of working with the local schools, getting our teachers involved, getting the parents, shop- pers, associates and suppliers involved, because they want to be part of that. So, it really is affecting every part of our business.
Mira Slott: Do you bring the children to the stores?
Maria Brous: We do. We do school tours. We talk about our practices and our efforts. As a matter of fact, the Publix GreenWise Markets have a unique program because they’re differ- ent, obviously, than any other store that we have. So, they have a whole sustainability packet that they go through. The science teachers usually love to go through and they work on different activities, not only from identifying green products and green efforts, but we talk about some of the engineering — we talk about the roofing. We talk about the paneling. We even talk about the restrooms, what’s recyclable, reusable. We do all different types of things to engage the students.
Mira Slott: Jumping back a little bit to packaging, in the produce industry in particu- lar, food safety has become a big issue and there’s a debate going on about packaging. On one hand, there’s been a trend toward more packaging for food safety. But then, packaging
MAY 2009 • PRODUCE BUSINESS 31
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