Wegmans Introduces Environmentally Friendly Food-to-Go Packaging
In response to customer requests for "green" fresh-food packaging, Wegmans Food Markets Inc. is introducing new sustainable packaging and containers in its fresh food areas, Mary Ellen Burris, vice president of consumer affairs, said in her weekly column on the company’s web site.
Burris said that most of the comments from environmentally conscious customers center around the chain’s Market Café prepared food programs and its produce departments. She said the Rochester, N.Y.-based is working on new packaging and has implemented some changes already.
“A recent step: change all the Asian Wokery Bar food containers (the little red boxes) from pure, bleached paper to those made of 100 percent recycled paper (35 percent is post consumer paper; the rest is scrap paper generated during manufacturing),” Burris wrote in her column. “The new boxes perform just like the ‘old’ ones; only the color now is ‘kraft’ or brown. On the salad and food bars, we’re adding a ‘green’ choice; a similar material of 100 percent recycled paper. We’ll be watching for customer reaction and would love your feedback.”
Wegmans, which operates 71 stores in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia and Maryland, had a two-day packaging summit a month ago to review all the different packaging material the company uses in the course of business. Burris said that Wegmans’ suppliers and distributors are working toward “newer alternatives.”
“The objective [of the summit] was to see where we could reduce packaging containers by either elimination or sharing similar ones across multiple departments,” Burris wrote. “Next in priority was to determine where packaging could be made using a renewable resource (like recycled paper or sources like sugar cane or grasses as in our fish fry containers). Then, to consider where the type of plastic could be shifted to materials customers could put into curbside recycling. In most areas where our stores are, there is recycling of codes #1 (PET) or #2 (HDPE).”
Burris added that packaging material costs are “way, way up (with the price of oil and shipping),” which is added incentive for the Rocherster-, N.Y.-based grocer to find cheaper and more environmentally friendly alternatives.