Whole Foods Market Joins OSI’s Early Adopters Program

Whole Foods Market Oakville joined OSI’s early adopters program in June, signing OSI’s Sustainability Declaration and committing to work with other early adopters in the Halton Region to create the conditions necessary for a sustainable future.

 “We look forward to working with the Oakville Sustainability Initiative on new innovative projects with interested early adopters and involving the community,” says Alexandra Knowles of Whole Foods Market Oakville. “One of Whole Foods Market’s core values is caring for the community and the environment. This initiative is a big step in bringing sustainability ideas and best practices to the forefront.”

We all know that Whole Foods Market  is a natural foods grocer offering organic produce that is good for us. But Whole Foods Market is determined to lead by example and its new alliance with The Oakville Sustainability Initiative is a telling sign of solid community involvement.  Its passionate Green Mission Team, lead by Associate Store Team Leader Alexandra Knowles, dedicates itself to coming up with and implementing ideas to make their store more sustainable.  Our community benefits from their efforts.

Whole Foods Market engages in comprehensive commercial recycling.  At last count, they recycle approximately 72% of their waste, including composting organics and recycling all paper, aluminum, glass, and plastics. Since Halton Region does not yet provide commercial recycling programs, Whole Foods Market Oakville has taken it upon themselves to employ a local company, U-Pak Disposals Limited, to pick up and recycle their waste. Another company, Rothsay, picks up scraps from their meat and seafood departments and renders them into a broad range of commercial tallow and protein products. And yet another, The Biodiesel Company, takes their leftover cooking oil to make biodiesel fuel.

Whole Foods Market Oakville is also working to substantially reduce the distribution of plastic and paper bags at their store. Their initial effort has three prongs: educating their customers about the numerous negative impacts plastic and paper bags have on the environment, offering two types of reusable bags, and refunding customers 10 cents for every bag they reuse in the store (paper, plastic, or reusable). During the first six weeks of the program, which began at the end of April, Whole Foods Market Oakville sold a total of 4200 reusable bags and doubled the number of customer bag refunds they give in a four-week period to 10,000. Their paper and plastic bag supply costs decreased approximately 25%. In six short weeks, perhaps one quarter of their customers have changed the way they shop. Veryimpressive.

Whole Foods Market Oakville works to be socially sustainable as well as environmentally sustainable. Every day, they donate produce, prepared foods and bakery items to Food for Life, a local nonprofit that distributes donated foods to shelters and food banks in the Halton Region. When they have more leftover bakery goods than Food for Life can take, U-Pak picks up the baked goods and incorporates them into pig feed. Whole Foods Market holds 5% Days whereby they donate 5% of that day's net sales to a local or regional non-profit or educational organization. And they donate food, labor and dollars to numerous local not-for-profit organizations.

The Oakville Sustainability Initiative and Whole Foods Market Oakville are working together to share their knowledge with the rest of our community and to help lead Halton Region’s transition to making sustainability a priority.