Being green part of a day’s work at local grocery store
MID-CITY When it comes to sustainability and environmentally-friendly practices, a tenet shared by its members/customers, the Co-Opportunity grocery store leads by example.
The member-owned grocery store is among 14 businesses in Santa Monica that have a Green Business Certification (GBC), a program that accredits establishments for incorporating sustainable practices in their operation.
The program, operated by a collaborative that includes nonprofit group Sustainable Works, the Santa Monica Convention & Visitors Bureau, the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce and City Hall, was launched in the fall of 2006 with a group of businesses that participated in the pilot phase. Among those first group of businesses are the Ambrose Hotel, Euphoria Loves Rawvolution, Library Alehouse, Gladstein Neandross & Associates, Patagonia and Co-Op.
“We are trying to be as environmentally friendly and as proactive in changing the current conditions in the environment,” Co-Op General Manager Bruce Palma said on Friday.
Businesses striving for green status must fulfill a list of criteria of sustainable measures that vary with the type of business. The GBC offers certification for three types of businesses — office and retail; grocers and restaurants; and hotels and motels.
Certification comes with a fee, depending on the size of the operation, ranging from as little as $150 for a small motel to as much as $500 for a large grocer.
With the completion of the GBC comes the benefits of marketing as all program participants receive a decal that can be stuck on to a window, attracting the Westside’s eco-savvy clientele.
For the Co-Op, receiving certification was-n’t a stretch since making a positive impact on the environment is part of its mission.
The business was founded in 1974 and is the only natural cooperative grocer in the Los Angeles area. Located on Broadway and 16th Street, the grocery store is owned by its 9,000 active members. “Being that we’re in the Los Angeles (area), we’re working as hard as we can to find as much local produce as we can,” Palma said.“Local can mean produce in Ojai that is sent to our distributor in Downtown (L.A.).”
“We try whenever we can to get closest to the store geographically because that is what our customers want as well,” Palma added.
Among the grocery store’s sustainable practices includes using environmentally-safe cleaning products in the public and employee restrooms, which are equipped with recycled toilet paper and paper towels.
The practices extend to its power usage, using low-mercury fluorescent lamps to illuminate the store and saving energy through automatic dimmers. The Co-Op also encourages its businesses to cut down on emissions, offering a ride-share incentive program where it awards $25 cash prizes every month to six winning employees who ride the bus, carpool, bike or walk to work. Ride-sharing is one of the items on the GBC checklist for businesses.
Situated in the grocery store are two battery recycling bins standing approximately three feet high, six inches wide. Each bin can hold up to 100 recycled batteries and the bins fill up every day, Palma said.
The Co-Op has also incorporated the green business lifestyle into its furniture, recently replacing its old office desks and chairs with furnishings produced by a company that is certified in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a certification awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council.
There are more sustainable practices in store for the Co-Op’s future as the grocery store is planning to participate in a pilot program with City Hall where it will use its food waste, including fruit pulp and spoiled produce, and transform it into energy at the Hyperion Treatment Plant in Playa del Rey, Palma said.
The grocer is also about to eliminate plastic bags starting April 1, jumping ahead of an anticipated ordinance that will ban single-use plastic bags from all retailers in the city.
“We’re being proactive in bringing in more reusable bags as an alternative for shoppers to purchase and use over and over again,” Palma said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 10, 2008. Read the original PDF.