I'm glad to find out that I'm not the only one who is ticked off about this. You are so very right; walking through the produce aisles (in an Ontario Superstore) you can find food from China, Egypt, Israel, and lots and lots from California (nothing against any of those places, but that is food with a lot of miles on it).

I found it to be the height of hypocrisy that they'd tout their "greeness" while flying in snow peas from China. Meanwhile, like you mentioned, most of that stuff grows right here at home in the summer. So it should at least be available when it's in season.

I have a relative that used to be a produce manager for IGA (a former grocery chain in Ontario). He tells me he would always try to get local produce in the store, but the company beauracracy would make him jump through very painful hoops to get it (i.e. tons and tons of paperwork and verrrry long delays). Why? Because the company also had their own warehouse business and they made money by warehousing large shipments of foreign produce for a length of time. There's no need to warehouse smaller and more frequent local produce shipments, so they purposely made it difficult for the individual stores to bring it in. Probably the same thing is going on with Loblaws/Superstore/Zehrs etc.

This artilcle raises a valid point--the "greening" of superstores like Loblaws is nothing more than a shallow marketing gesture. If Loblaws were really serious about environmental issues, they would offer local produce. I am a Quebec resident and I get organic and delicious local produce year round through a local farmer that provides boxes at various drop-off points on the island of Montreal. (I use Jardins de la Montagne, but there are at least a few such operations on the Island of Montreal alone.)
Superstores like Loblaws will only change their ways when it is financially strategic for them to do so--that is, when consumers stop buying their chemically sprayed, climate-change-causing produce shipped in CO2 producing trucks and planes from Mexico and beyond.

I honestly appreciate Loblaw's efforts to go 'green' despite the fact that its food might not necessarily be local. If I want fresh and local food, I head to the farmers' market.
Canada's greenest shopping is a huge step in the right direction. Because it's so cheap, we never use plastic bags anymore (well..almost) since we bought so many!

I honestly believe that a new Green shopping bag is a first step on the way of changing of large companies' awareness for environmental issues, and in my opinion, Loblaws is making the first step. It is quite evident that within a few weeks since Loblaws announced their Green bag initiative, most of the large supermarket chains have followed their steps and came up with their own version of a "green bag".

For years we've been complaining that the large companies do very little to help the environment. Here it is - someone is doing something about it, and gets under the squall of critics calling it "nothing more than a shallow marketing gesture"?! Keep your focus on what's important to us, consumers - and that's supporting and encouraging such initiatives, because if we don't support the first step, the second one may never come.

And finally I completely agree with you that consumers want to see more local grown food products in grocery stores, but it's much easier for smaller grocery stores and farmers' markets. The large chains have other considerations like food safety, consistency of product quality, all-year-around availability. They require very large volumes of consistent quality food products, which is very difficult to get buying from the local farmers. Our fruit and veggies season is only 3-4 months short - what would you say if we only had this products for 25-30% of the time? Aha... don't like it? So, I guess we need California and Mexico producers to supply us with fruits and veggies all year around.

Why dont you move from plastic shopping bags to the biodegradable bags that are available,and I'm
sure would be appreciated by your customers as well as the landfills and the environment that you
claim youare trying to protect by the SALE of your
supposedly green bag.Why is it that all the supermarkets and grocery stores use smoke and mirrors to make the public believe that they are saving the earth when all they are doing is saving their own bottom lines.Enough of the talk and lets see your stores initiate a biodegradable bag programme instead of this "save a billion bag"
slogan that you are promoting.

The green shopping bag is an example of our idiocracy. What one might not realize is that we ship our recycling to China and India. The Loblaws bags are made in China, where we don't know the labour or environmental standards. We then ship the bags back here. Shipping impacts climate change in a big way, and is not covered by Kyoto. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/mar/03/travelsenvironmentalimpact.transportintheuk.

There is a very simple solution that works very well. Go to price chopper or food basics, and they set out used boxes, people sometimes leave a bag full of plastic bags. I love going there, I hardly ever need to buy a bag and have an incentive to save money by not buying them, and since I'm like many people who always forget their cotton bag, I just use the boxes. Re-use is always better than recycle.

This makes a heck of a lot more sense than the supposedly Green bag with the enormous carbon footprint.

And we shouldn't send our recycling away, why not save some jobs here, where we can ensure worker safety and environmental standards.

I want your wast and i will do green enviormental things with it. I own a family dairy farm . I would like to install an anaerobic digester . This produces methane that fuels a motor to produce electricty.My farm will produce 50kwh but I need 100kwh to go ahead mith this project. Wroting egetables,fruit,stail bread and lots more will produce methane . THE GREEN FOR US. This spoiled produce probibly goes to a land fill site. Once it goes through a digester it becomes a valuable fertilizer for my crops Thus not filling up our dumps.It will produce green electricty. THe surplase heat from the motor can heat 6 homes , a greenhouse dry corn ect.
Please direct this to the person in charge of your green program. Richard Brisco 613-432-8308

I operate a family dairy farm and am attempting to do something huge that is very environmentally friendly. I am attempting to build an anaerobic digester. In other words, I am using waste products to produce power. The manure from my 50 cows will produce 50 kwh of electricity. This is not enough for my project, but the manure can be mixed with biodegradable materials in order to achieve 100 kwh. Rotting vegetables, fruit, stale bread, fryer oil, grease trap waste and a lot more will produce methane which is the fuel that I need to run the engine/generator. 1 cubic metre of fryer oil produces as much methane as 70 cows. 2 cubic metres of household table scraps produce as much methane as 70 cows. This is a win-win situation for farmers, for companies that handle food and for the environment for the following reasons.

1 The biodegradable foods will no longer fill our land fill sites
2 Companies who send their waste to be recycled through this digester can benefit from the public relations (the environment is the most important concern for Canadians right now)
3 The byproduct makes a wonderful natural fertilizer, thus commercial, potentially harmful fertilizers are not required
4 The heat that comes off the engine can heat 6 homes, heat a green house or be used for such things as drying corn or hay. This natural heat would replace other types of fossil fuels that would have been used without the methane.

Please direct this email to the person(s) in charge of biodegradable waste or a waste handling facility.

Richard Brisco
rmcbrisco@renfrew.net
613-432-8308