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This page highlights actions that members are taking to make their operations more sustainable. By sharing our success we can inspire and educate each other to go to new heights.
Members' Public Sustainability Reports:
2009
Frontier Coop Public Sustainability Report 2009
Lundberg Family Farms Public Sustainability Report 2009
Nature's Path Public Sustainability Report 2009
Organic Valley Public Sustainability Report 2009
Organically Grown Company Public Sustainability Report 2009
2008
Organically Grown Company Public Sustainability Report 2008
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Member Accomplishments: 2009
Annie's Homegrown offered $50,000 in scholarship funds to undergraduate and graduate students studying sustainable and organic agriculture at an accredited U.S. college or university.
The Ashland Food Cooperative (AFC) received the Oregon Organic Coalition's Organic Award of Excellence, recognizing efforts such as being the first Oregon Tilth Certified Organic retailer and its support for Provender, the Organicology conference and other causes. ACF also co-sponsored a week-long Eat Local Challenge and discontinued plain bottled water smaller than one gallon to address associated environmental and social concerns.
Big Tree Farms began using Fair Fuel a biofuel made from local, composted spent sugar cane and other byproducts that are packed into dense, efficiently burning briquettes. It is produced by small farmers and purchased by Big Tree Farms for community processing facilities. This replaces wood in traditional processing, preserving forests, biodiversity and climate.
CF Fresh installed solar at their Sedro-Woolley office and launched an energy conservation initiative in 2007. Data collected for CF Fresh's 2009 FTSLA report show these programs are having a significant positive impact. CF Fresh's 2008 electrical purchases decreased 20% from their previous three-year average, with an additional 6% savings estimates for 2009. The solar panels produce almost 22,000 KWH, or 37% of facility energy needs.
Cris-P Produce implemented a program optimizing cooler efficiency. Their warehouse operator assesses weekly production needs to determine total cooler needs, maximizes cooler use and turns the others off. The sustainability team tracks weekly performance against their targets for cases/cubic foot and makes changes to improve. Julio Lopez reports After doing this for 1 month we saw substantial differences in our electric use.
GloryBee Foods set up compost collection at its three Eugene, OR locations in June, which has proven to be a huge success. GloryBee is now composting 33% of its total waste/byproducts stream, significantly decreasing the amount of waste sent to landfills.
Hummingbird Wholesale improved recycling and cut landfill load in half thanks to employees who completed a Master Recyclers course. They are now recycling plastics not accepted through municipal programs, and composting non-food compostables. Hummingbird's 'Om Grown Granola is now 100% grown in Oregon through a new partnership with a local farmer growing flax seed.
Mountain Rose Herbs implemented a program with incentives for carpooling and bicycling to work. They pay staff who carpool 12-cents per mile per passenger, pay bike commuters 20-cents per mile and offer a yearly $500 cash bonus to the staff member who has logged the most miles. Learn more online.
Organics Unlimited's GROW program (Giving Resources and Opportunities to Workers), expanded its reach to Ecuador, funding a program that engages at risk youth in start-up micro-businesses. This will also allow Organics Unlimited to provide bananas and pineapples from Ecuador under the GROW label. The company also drilled a new well to provide better quality water at its banana farming operations in Mexico, improving the working environment and the bananas. The region's irrigation and washing facilities typically use river water, which can be contaminated with chemicals and pathogens from upstream.
Organic Valley launched an innovative, on-line eco-impact calculator where consumers can compute the amount of chemical pesticides, fertilizers and synthetic nitrogen kept out of the environment as a result of their organic milk purchases. The calculator also shows Organic Valley's total impact since 1988.
PCC Markets received Seattle Business Magazine's Green Washington Award for the retail category, recognizing its leadership, innovation and commitment to sustaining the environment.
UNFI and Albert's Organics established green teams across their facilities nationally. Each team implements internal education and sustainability initiatives, as well as environmentally-oriented community projects such as adopting a park or highway, starting a community garden or partnering with a local environmental non-profit. Albert's has also established a philanthropy budget to start humanitarian-focused Helping Hands Committees at each facility, for projects such as partnering with local shelters, housing groups and others.
Affiliates
Quality Assurance International (QAI) is implementing an ISO 14001Environmental Management System. ISO 14001 accreditation will help QAI ensure it evaluates performance consistently and makes progress. Improvements to date include expanding green office purchases, decreasing paper usage, and bundling inspections to reduce costs and environmental footprint.
SCS completed its first Fair Labor & Community Benefits Certification inspection, on an organic cotton production supply chain. They audited cotton producer co-ops and farms, a cotton gin, a spinning plant cooperative, a sewing cooperative, a knitting and dying process, a manufacturer and a screen printer.
