Sustainability efforts
All Smith’s stores accept plastic grocery bags for recycling and combine those with the many yards of shrink-wrap taken from food deliveries to return to our warehouse. The product is then shipped to Smith’s plastic grocery bag manufacturer to be made into new grocery bags. In 2009 the Bag to Bag recycling effort captured 538,480 pounds of shrink wrap plastic from stores and used grocery bags from customers—equal to 45 million plastic bags!
We seek partnerships with local grassroots organizations to improve the environment in meaningful ways. Hundreds of reusable shopping bags were given to nonprofit groups who used them in local projects. In 2009, Smith’s worked with Tree Utah to purchase and gift 125 mature trees to customers wishing to plant them in their yards in one store community as part of Salt Lake County’s One Million Tree commitment.
Smith’s stores conserve energy in many ways by using low-impact LED lights in frozen and refrigerated food cases, skylights that emit natural light, and heated water as a by-product of freezer energy. The use of stained concrete floors in lieu of tile floors eliminates the need for harsh cleaning chemicals entering the waste water stream. Our delivery trailers use lighter plastic pallets to lighten loads and consume less fuel.
Kroger Co. summarizes the many sustainable practices found at Smith’s and other Kroger divisions in the 2009 Sustainability Report.
