Whole Foods Really Is Bad for the Planet

Photo by That Other Paper, via <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/austins_only_paper/390948538/">Flickr</a>.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Earlier this week I pondered whether Whole Foods, or more specifically, its CEO John Mackey, is bad for the planet. Mackey’s latest comments questioning whether mankind is warming the planet prompted the piece, but I also looked at some of the greater questions about just how much, if anything, Whole Foods is doing to back up its green image. Well, low and behold, a study of grocers and their sustainability efforts documents just how little the company actually does when it comes to climate and related environmental issues.

Released in December 2008, the study from sustainable business group Ceres assesses what 63 companies are doing to prepare themselves to face the challenge of climate change, with a focus on board oversight, management execution, public disclosure, greenhouse gas emissions accounting and strategic planning and performance. Whole Foods earned a pitiful 27 score on the assessment (out of a possible 100)—flunking in basically every category.

From the summary:

Whole Foods’ climate change strategy is focused almost entirely on renewable energy purchases only. Th e company has purchased 1.2 million MWh hours of wind-based renewable energy credits (serving as carbon off sets for 100 percent of the electricity used in all of its stores), installed solar panels on nine stores, and converted its truck fleet to bio-diesel fuel. However, Whole Foods has not publicly disclosed a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventory or emissions reduction targets.

Whole Foods was given a zero on board oversight, and only an 11 on management’s execution of a sustainability strategy. Whole Foods neither accounts for nor publicly discloses its emissions. As of the date of the report, the company didn’t have emissions goals or plans in place for reducing emissions. Since that report was released, the company has taken on some additional energy-related commitments, but it doesn’t appear to have changed much in the other areas.

Ceres also rated United Kingdom-based grocery giant Tesco, which scored a 78. The grocer has been among the most aggressive companies in the UK on climate, employing a carbon labeling system and even using expired meat to generate electricity.

US-based Safeway also scored significantly higher than Whole Foods, at 48. Safeway doesn’t get too much attention for its sustainability efforts, but it was the first retailer to join the Chicago Climate Exchange and the California Climate Action Registry, and has launched a comprehensive greenhouse gas reduction and sustainability initiative.

The other grocer Ceres rated, Kroger, didn’t do particularly well, scoring 23 points.

All of this just highlights the fact that Whole Foods, in reality, is far from the green grocer many customers imagine it to be. Kooky, libertarian, climate-change-denying CEO aside, the company just isn’t making the grade when it comes to climate change.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate