UK SuperMarkets Under Scrutiny…..
Is Your Favorite Supermarket Pulling It’s Eco Weight?
This month (August 2009) BBC Wildlife Magazine reviewed certain aspects of our favorite shops and rated them on the same criteria – and it made an interesting read.
For example- all 6 stores were rated on 8 hot environmental issues – giving them the chance to earn a total of 40 points. The highest scoring store only got 29 of them – so that means that even the best performing eco friendly store was missing about 27% of the points – not so good really.
But then we sort of already know that supermarkets can’t ever really be ‘green’ anyway.
The Criteria:
There were 8 ways in which the stores were offered up to 5 points, these ranged from Air Miles through Fair Trade and on to highly contentious Palm Oil.
I will summarise each catagory mentioning the best and worst stores as judged by BBC Wildlife.
Air Miles:
Sainsbury’s came out worse here with only 2/5 as although they do source local food where possible they don’t label air-freighted foods. However M&S do label their products – plus they also source all their in-season vegetables from farms in the UK.
Animal Welfare:
An issue we all have an opinion on, but did you know that Asda and Tesco still sell eggs from battery-caged hens! After all this time – people are still buying them from 2 of our largest stores – and they are still supplying them!
Climate Change:
When asked if they have specific targets for reducing carbon emissions M&S said that they are due to become carbon neutral by 2012 and has 4 eco-factories that currently save 50% of the standard energy needed elsewhere. Asda however has said that they will try to cut their emissions by 10% but have set no dates at all!
Fair Trade:
Co-Op wins here as they were one of the first stores ever to convert to Fair Trade products in many different areas and are still one of the market leaders and currently has over 260 Fair Trade lines in their stores. Morrisons however have just 10 Fair Trade Lines in their huge stores – and none of them are own-label!
Sustainable Fish:
Carrying a huge 56 lines of MSC labelled fish is Sainsbury’s who stock their own brands of MSC labelled foods – but Tesco filed to provide full details of MSC products, apart from the fact that their own-brand foods are not labelled as MSC certified.
GM Feeds:
Whether cattle are being fed GM feeds is also an area that concerns consumers, and as a result the M&S have made sure that all their own label meat and dairy is GM free – although they haven’t been labelled as such. Generally all the other stores use GM feeds forr their meat and dairy products unless they are certified as Organic (meaning that they legally can’t be).
Organic Foods:
Over 70% of fruit and vegetables in M&S have an organic alternative as opposed to only 5% organic products in the Co-Op (only 22 lines). How can we be making changes to our shopping habits if we aren’t being offered a suitable alternative?
Use Of Pesticides:
Asda & Morrisons declined to mention whether they still used hazardous chemicals to treat their food or areas in which food was stored – whereas the other stores have put limits or bans in place for some well known chemicals.
Palm Oil:
A hot topic at the moment – although Asda and Sainsbury’s are the only ones that have actually done something about it that they are advertising. Morrisons says some products are but won’t tell consumers which products they are, M&S use 7 lines that should get certification soon but so far are not listed as sustainable and Tesco and Co-Op are ‘looking to switch’ but not for another 5 years or so!
Frightening stuff really – that we aren’t really pushing hard enough for these obvious changes to occur in our favorite stores.
We aren’t creating the demand needed to get a reaction out of these large companies. Whether we are making the wrong choices in our shopping – or we are making incorrect decisions based on little or misleading information – something isn’t working.
So either we need to start paying more attention to our shopping habits and the effect they are having on the animals and countryside around us or we may as well waste all the effort that has gone into the changes that people have brought around already!
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Tags: battery-caged hens, eco friendly shopping, eco friendly supermarket, eco superstore, how can i help, how eco friendly are supermarkets, is your local shop green, msc, palm oil certification, sustainable fish, time to make a change
August 12th, 2009 at 12:16 am
Hi
It’s no surprise that the supermarkets find it hard to change. They have done as their pleased for many years and it will take some time for things to make a difference. As for the general public we all need to play our part.