Social Responsibility

Ever since the first “bottle bill” limped through the Oregon legislature in 1971, supermarket retailers have had a love/hate relationship with recycling programs, embracing their positive impact on business and the community while decrying the regulatory frustration.

Most retailers have settled into a state of peaceful co-existence with recycling, which has emerged as a key component of corporate social responsibility programs. And while reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions have received the lion’s share of publicity, retailers, consumers and politicians across the country are still asking the age-old question — paper or plastic?

San Antonio-based H.E. Butt Grocery used the most recent “Recycling Day” to distribute polypropylene bags to each shopper who brought in five regular plastic bags. After giving away some 20,000 of them, the retailer put the remainder on sale for 99 cents each. It also expanded the program by asking shoppers to deposit dry cleaner bags and the outer wraps from paper towels and bathroom tissue in the recycling bins at the front of its stores.

Cincinnati-based Kroger has launched a major recycling program for plastics within its central division that uses custom-designed barrels in each store for depositing plastic grocery bags and other plastics for recycling. It is expected to expand chain-wide by the end of the year.

Several major chains are recycling consumer electronics. Costco has launched a program that rewards customers for recycling old equipment like PCs, LCD monitors, digital cameras, camcorders, game systems and MP3 players. Customers can check the trade-in value of an item online and, if they choose to recycle it, can register to receive a pre-paid UPS shipping label.

Richmond, Va.-based Circuit City has launched an initiative aimed at recycling cell phones and rechargeable batteries, encouraging customers to drop off these items in special collection bags.

State vs. local
It is California, however, that remains the domestic epicenter of recycling — and the place where state regulations sometimes square off against local ordinances. Several chains offer discounts to customers who bring their own bags; Safeway and Albertsons maintain collection bins for used plastic bags.

According to a 2005 survey by the California Grocers Association, the state’s grocers recycled 32 million pounds of plastic, 1.1 billion pounds of cardboard and paper, 74 million pounds of corrugated wax containers, 865 million pounds of “green” waste (produce trimmings or unsaleable bakery items) and 76 million pounds of rendered products like fat and bone.

The thing that may bring the rule of reason to statewide recycling efforts in California — and to other states, as well — is the Plastic Carryout Bag Recycling Act (AB 2449) that went into effect last June. Stores with sales in excess of $2 million annually (or those over 10,000 sq. ft.) that offer plastic bags are now required to provide a bin at each location where consumers can return clean plastic carryout bags.

The law also requires that reusable bags be available for purchase, and that retailers provide records describing the collection, transport and recycling of plastic bags for a three-year period.

CGA and its membership supported the measure, in part because it stipulates that local jurisdictions could not adopt or implement ordinances that would pre-empt statewide recycling programs. “One of the most difficult things for companies working across counties is when each county wants to do something different,” says Dave Heylen, CGA’s vice president of communications. “Most grocers just want consistency.”

Despite the state program, Santa Monica officials were studying imposition of an outright ban on plastic bags or, alternatively, requiring stores to provide compostable/biodegradable plastic or paper bags made from 40 percent recycled material.

And retailers everywhere are watching what happens in San Francisco, where a ban on non-compostable plastic supermarket bags went into effect in November.