Greening Groceries

When sustainability and food are mentioned in the same breath, it usually brings to mind images of organic produce, cage-free labels, and cloth grocery bags.

But like any business, the selling of groceries has a back end where much of the energy and resource use resides. How products are shipped, the containers they come in, and the operations of the store where they’re sold is often as important as the label on the items themselves.

At Egg Harbor’s Main Street Market, co-owner Kaaren Northrop says they’ve had many conservation practices in place for years as a matter of business. They use energy-efficient coolers, heat reclamation units, and have recycling programs. When Wisconsin Public Service performed an energy audit recently, they had only one minor suggestion – that they change the light bulbs. It even extends to the layout of the store, with more windows than most large supermarkets providing natural lighting. But reading last year’s Peninsula Pulse Sustainability Issue prompted Northrop to take a closer look at the store’s operations in every detail.

“After that we had a staff meeting and laid it all out,” said Northrop. “What can we do to try and get rid of some of this waste?”

They gathered ideas from staff and went through the store aisle by aisle in search of ways to reduce waste or find alternative products with less or more responsible packaging. What they came up with were a lot of little decisions that add up to a major change for one of the county’s busiest floors.

“Packaging is huge in this industry,” Northrop says. “And all plastic is oil somehow, so we made a concerted effort to go through the store and eliminate as much packaging as we could.”

They began offering 50 cent coffee refills to those who brought in re-usable thermoses. They offer re-usable grocery bags too, and where they couldn’t eliminate packaging, they switched to better versions.

The market now uses paper soup cups and serves subs in a cellophane wrapper, eliminating the Styrofoam sandwich trays they used to use. The changes have made an impact on customers.

“I think it does make a difference,” Northrop says. “It makes people think. Some have even commented at how much they liked the new sandwich serving because they don’t have any garbage when they’re done.”

With a large deli and bakery, Main Street prepares a lot of food of their own, and limiting waste is a priority there as well, where the deli manager composts much of their food waste.

The re-evaluation process also made Northrop realize how many local products they sell. They’re participating in a UW-Madison research survey of local producers, and working with the researchers helped open their eyes to the many facets of Door County products on their shelves.

“Jams, jellies, wine, coffee, there’s a lot more than I thought,” she says. “The more you can do that the better off you are because you save gas, and a lot of the packaging is reusable.”

Until recently she says she always thought of them more as Door County branded products, not as a buy local effort, but she’s come to fully recognize the benefits.

“It’s good business to go local and it does help the economy, which is part of sustaining this community,” she says.

The effort at Main Street Market has even extended to their landscaping. Last fall they decided they wanted to do something different and they began working with Clifford Orsted at Door Landscape. He extolled the benefits of native landscaping.

“He explained that with our unique environment, using native plants means we don’t need the fertilizer, all the water, and the maintenance,” Northop says.

Last year marked 20 years in business for Main Street, but the green revolution has presented a new challenge.

“We’re in a business that has a lot of waste and we’re very conscious of that,” Northrop says. “We want to do better.”