By: Jan Rasikas, General Manager
I am fortunate to attend national and regional meetings where leading economists speak about the state of our economy and trends for grocery retailers. Despite the overall belt tightening in recessionary times, products and companies representing ethical business practices did not experience the anticipated declining sales.
In fact, many economists predicted sales to drop substantially for this category but it’s the opposite of what happened. The price of organic and ‘green’ products did not stop consumers from purchasing; instead they kept or added organic and green products to their shopping lists!
This means many consumers, with less to spend, select high quality organic foods and decide to support companies that give back to their communities. Why, we might ask? Well… I leave this for the economists to spin; they too need a job.
But we get a bird’s eye view here at the Viroqua Food Co-op. We experience firsthand the commitment folks have to the health and wellbeing of their families, community and the environment. They choose organic foods, cook from scratch, and clean their homes with non-toxic products. They recycle, compost and grow their own veggies. When we tell the story of a company who donates a percentage of their profits to charity, certifies for Fair Trade or follows environmentally sound practices, we see shoppers making a choice to support those companies. When we mark a product as local or regional, we know we’re helping folks recognize the importance of building a strong local food economy.
Beware American consumer! These days’ being green is a marketable idea that doesn’t require the proof of good intentions or actual practices. Green-washing and Local-washing are attempts to jump on the bandwagon to gain increased sales! Green and local products are attractive to retailers because of their growth trends, but calling it local doesn’t make so. Big box stores are advertising themselves as ‘your local outlet.’ Garden products labeled as ‘green’ and organic were recently discovered to contain not one certified organic ingredient.
At VFC, our local tags signify a product as grown or produced within a 100 mile radius of Viroqua. Regional tags are for products from the 4 states around us and greater Wisconsin. As for green; the VFC used many green building materials and practices when we built our current store, but we’re not stopping there! Here are a few of our recent projects along with a few coming up:
- We have plans for photo voltaic or solar thermal panels on our south roof to heat water and collect energy. We are eligible for grant money and incentives but also need to add our own funding to complete the project. Watch for details and opportunities to help us achieve supplemental solar power at the Co-op!
- Jeff, VFC’s facilities manager, is using 6 watt LEDs (light emitting diode) to replace the 20 watt spotlights. They carry a 15 year warranty and cut energy usage by over 66%.
- 2 woven aluminum night curtains were installed on open air coolers, with more coming this year. The curtains reduce energy consumption by around 30%, extend compressor life.
- An air curtain was installed over the front door to reduce hot/cold energy intrusion into the building.
- We’re beginning to replace our 4' full spectrum fluorescent lighting tubes throughout the store with LEDs that use 15 watts, cutting energy usage by over 50% in those fixtures.
- Improved recycling containers in the seating area and the patio are coming soon.
We make a positive impact on our community by choosing local, organic and truly green products and practices.
Go Co-op!
Photo credit
Every year, the average US citizen spends over $400 on bottled water. This is 1,900 times the price of tap water, yet Americans still use an average of 28 billion bottles of water yearly. Of those 28 billion bottles, 22 billion end up in landfills (where it then takes 300 years for the plastic to biodegrade). The production of bottled water, according to the What’s Tappening website, uses as much as 17 million barrels of oil—enough to fuel a million cars for an entire year.
In a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council, 47% of respondents said they drank bottled water because of what they saw as health and safety problems with tap water. But the idea that all bottled water is pure is a marketing myth. Bottled water generally is no cleaner, safer, or healthier than tap water. In fact, the federal government requires far more rigorous and frequent safety testing and monitoring of municipal drinking water.
- The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates only the 30 or 40 percent of bottled water sold across state lines.
- According to a Natural Resources Defense Council study of 103 bottled water brands, about one-quarter of the brands tested contained bacterial or chemical contamination in some samples at levels that violated “enforceable state standards or warning levels.”
- The same study found one-fifth of the tested brands “exceeded state bottled water microbial guidelines in at least some samples.”
- When combined with bromide, ozonation—a process increasingly used to disinfect bottled water—can produce bromate, a possible human carcinogen. In 2006, FDA ordered a recall of several brands of bottled water with bromate levels that exceeded the standard of 10 parts per billion.
- The FDA has less than one full-time employee devoted to bottled water oversight. The rules apply only to bottled water packaged and sold across state lines, which leaves out about 60 to 70 percent of water bottled and sold within a single state. FDA regulations also exempt carbonated bottled water.
- The FDA requires that companies test for bacterial contamination in water only once per week, and they must test only four empty bottles once every three months for bacterial contamination. When it comes to chemical, physical, or radiological contaminants, a sample of water must be checked only once a year.
- The FDA, charged with overseeing the health and safety of bottled water, does not test bottled water for phthalates like DEP—a chemical that is used to produce plastic water bottles and which is also a potential cancer agent in humans.
- The EPA requires that water systems serving more than one million residents test 300 water samples per month, while utilities serving three million people or more must collect and test 480 samples monthly, far more than the once–a–week test for bottled water.
Another reason to stop buying bottled water is the release of independent studies regarding bisphenol-A (BPA) and how this chemical may be adversely affecting our health. First synthesized in 1891, BPA is used in the production of epoxy resins and polycarbonate plastics worldwide. It is used to make plastic bottles of all kinds and is often used as a coating inside canned goods to protect the contents from exposure to the metal.
However, as these plastic bottles and canned goods age, BPA has a tendency to leach into the contents where, according to several studies, they adversely affect our health in many different ways.
The plastics industry says that BPAs are benign and that there is no cause for alarm, but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. According to its critics, BPA mimics naturally occurring estrogen, a hormone that is part of the endocrine system. “These hormones control the development of the brain, the reproductive system and many other systems in the developing fetus,” says Frederick vom Saal, Ph.D., a developmental biologist at the University of Missouri. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals can duplicate, block or exaggerate hormonal responses which lead to a wide range of developmental difficulties.
In recent years, scientists have moved from studying BPA’s damaging effects in laboratory animals to linking it to heart disease, sterility and altered childhood development in humans. Many questions still remain about dosage effects and the full nature of those links, but this January the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that “recent studies provide reason for some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior, and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children.” We are just in the beginning stages of understanding how BPA affects our health but given the preliminary findings, the outlook is not rosy.
As Science continues to search for a culprit in the rising rates of cancers, tumors, miscarriages, Down’s syndrome, birth defects, autism, and a wide range of other maladies, BPA figures to be at least a contributing factor.
And if the impact on human health weren’t bad enough, a survey of 200 sites in 20 countries around the world has found that bisphenol-A is ubiquitous in Earth’s oceans.
The oceanic BPA survey, presented March 23 2010 at an American 
Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco, was conducted by Nihon University chemists Katsuhiko Saido and Hideto Sato. At an ACS meeting last year, they described how soft plastic in seawater doesn’t just float or sink intact, but can break down rapidly, releasing toxins. In their new findings, they showed that BPA-containing hard plastics can break down too, and found BPA in ocean water and sand at concentrations ranging from .01 to .50 parts per million.
As for what those numbers mean for public and environmental health, it’s hard to say. BPA can cause reproductive disorders in shellfish and crustaceans, and doses below a single part per trillion can have cell-level effects, but the path from water and sand to ocean animals needs to be studied.
About three million tons of BPA-containing plastics are produced each year. The United Nations estimates that the average square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of plastic trash.
“Marine debris plastic in the ocean will certainly constitute a new global ocean contamination for long into the future,” wrote Saido and Sato in their presentation.
A number of states have already banned BPA in baby bottles. Other U.S. Co-ops, including Linden Hills of St. Paul, MN and the Ashland, OR Food Co-op no longer sell water in plastic bottles smaller than a gallon. In Minneapolis, TapMpls.com is a city-wide effort to encourage citizens to take the pledge to drink tap water. Pioneering restaurants in San Francisco have pledged to kick their bottled water habits and only serve tap water to their customers as part of Food & Water Watch’s Take Back the Tap Campaign. What should VFC do?
As a mission-driven cooperative with close to 80% of our sales purchased by owners, you vote with your dollar. VFC staff does not want to be the food police, but we will provide you with information so you can make an informed choice. Sales of small plastic bottles of water are strong in our store; does that mean our owners are voting for them, or they just don’t know the issues? 
Until enough of our owners stop buying single serve bottled water, we’ll continue to offer it. But we’re offering an irresistible deal to entice you to switch over to reusable water bottles.
Bring in any clean, stainless, glass or BPA free plastic container that’s under 64 oz. and fill it at VFC’s Reverse Osmosis station for a mere 25¢.
The next time that you reach for a plastic bottle of water to quench your thirst, think about the possible costs that have nothing to do with the price on the bottle.
Sources:
takebackthetap.org/
www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/bottled/take-back-the-tap/
www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/ocean-bpa/
www.waterfiltering.com/bottled-water/bpa-bottled-water.html