Cool Planet

Amanda Muise

By Amanda Muise
Development Officer,
Clean Air-Cool Planet

It must be getting close to lunchtime, because food has been on our minds a lot lately here at Clean Air-Cool Planet.

Our ongoing work on the CHEFS (CHarting Emissions from Food Services) Calculator has sparked some thought-provoking break-room discussions: Are local foods or organic foods better for the environment?  Is it better to ship tomatoes from across the country or to freeze local tomatoes all winter long?  Will eating an occasional hamburger torpedo my efforts to lead an environmentally sustainable life?  (What if I’m anemic?  I can get a doctor’s note…)

These discussions, as enthusiastic as they’ve been, have yet to yield any definitive answers – what they have done, however, is to highlight the bigger-than-expected role that food has to play in solving the problem of climate change.

That’s why we’re so excited to be participating in Whole Foods Market’s region-wide Five Percent Day fundraiser.  If you’re a Whole Foods shopper, you might have noticed these campaigns taking place at individual locations – store leadership selects an organization and then donates 5% of its net profits from a particular day to that organization.  But on April 22 – Earth Day! – twenty-three Whole Foods locations in the New England region will be joining forces to raise funds for Clean Air-Cool Planet.  Five percent of that day’s total net profits at these stores (including locations in Massachusetts and three locations in Connecticut) will be donated to Clean Air-Cool Planet to support our residential carbon reductions programs and our educational outreach on climate science to youth.

This is great news for us, but it’s more or less business as usual for Whole Foods, which since its founding has enjoyed a strong and consistent environmental track record.  They were the first major retailer to offset 100% of their energy use with wind energy credits, and their head office in Austin, TX, was recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a leader in recycling and construction waste reduction.  And Whole Foods’ newest store in Dedham, MA, is the first retail outlet in its state to generate on-site power with fuel cell technology. The 400 kW fuel cell will generate 90% of the store’s power – an especially impressive feat when you consider that the Dedham store is 70% larger than the chain’s other stores in New England. Whole Foods Dedham also boasts a state of the art refrigeration system, which will increase efficiency and prevent leaks of harmful gas into the atmosphere. Integration of a range of sustainable features has earned the store certification from the Green Globes environmental building rating system.

So, please keep us and Whole Foods in mind as Earth Day draws near, and if you need a justification to eat an organic hamburger (or a gluten-free cookie, or a ripe peach, or a nice big chunk of ethically-traded chocolate)… well, let’s just say that April 22 would be a great day to stop by your local Whole Foods Market and treat yourself!

This entry was posted on February 19, 2010 at 10:35 am and is filed under Food, Fundraising. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: five percent day, Food, food and climate, Fundraising, Whole foods market