Kroger's moonshot is well underway

"Sustainability.” It’s a big word, and it comes with a lot of responsibility. Sustainability is about:

• reducing food and packaging waste;

• using leftover food to help feed the poor;

• reducing the carbon footprint;

• removing undesirable chemicals and ingredients from food and beverage products to make them healthier;

• ensuring that suppliers and producers practice environmental stewardship and animal husbandry;

• offering products that are inclusive for all people;

• and treating employees fairly and with dignity while compensating them adequately.

Sustainability, simply, is responsibility on myriad levels associated with products and services.

In previous issues of Store Brands Today, we've looked at what several grocery retailers are doing to be more sustainable. These vignettes may focus on one or only a few things that retailers are doing. In most cases the retailers are doing much more and have made sustainability a significant component of their every-day businesses.

Today, we look at The Kroger Co.

ZEROING IN ON HUNGER AND WASTE
The Kroger Co.’s Rodney McMullen called it the retailer’s “moonshot.” McMullen, Kroger’s chairman and CEO, was talking about the retailer’s ambitious Zero Hunger/Zero Waste Plan initiative to end hunger in communities and eliminate waste in the company by 2025. McMullen announced the plan two years ago.

Let’s just say Kroger is well on its way to the moon with the initiative. The Cincinnati-based retailer recently revealed that food waste generated by its retail stores decreased 9% in the past year, and that the company had reduced both overall food waste and greenhouse gases resulting from it.

“We know 40% of food produced in the U.S. is thrown out, yet one in eight people in our country are food insecure — perhaps even someone we know,” McMullen says in Kroger’s Environment, Social and Governance Report. “Redirecting just one-third of the food wasted in the U.S. every year would more than feed those struggling with hunger.”

As part of Zero Hunger/Zero Waste, Kroger also announced it achieved a 13% improvement in supermarket food waste diverted from landfill, moving from 27% diversion in 2017 to 40% in 2018. The retailer said it has reduced the amount of plastic resin in its private brand packaging by 9.1 million pounds, on track to reaching its 10 million-pound goal by 2020.

Kroger also said it has sourced 88% of wild-caught fresh and frozen seafood in its supermarket seafood departments from certified sustainable sources, and also bought more than 17 million pounds of Fair Trade USA-certified ingredients for its private brand products. (Fair Trade USA enables sustainable development and community empowerment by cultivating a more equitable global trade model that benefits farmers, workers, fishermen, consumers, industry and the Earth.)

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