Making Every Day Earth Day

By Christina Nicholson, Project Coordinator

Earth Day is quite different for me now than it was in college. I had never even heard of Earth Day until my freshman year at the University of Missouri, and my introduction to the event involved bad local bands and a giant, slightly lopsided, paper maché globe.

Flash forward fifteen years, and I find myself at 8 a.m. on the morning of April 22nd, running around in a free-roam chicken suit (my contribution to our first annual Earth Day employee costume contest), trying to get boxes done for our Earth Day drawings and making sure that we have enough copies of all the literature we plan on handing out that day.

The theme that we focused on this year was "Make Earth Day Every Day" with the kinds of literature that we shared and the store programs that we introduced to the people who stopped by our table. For those of you who missed the chicken suit extravaganza on Earth Day this year - too bad, but we still have a lot of great information to share with everyone that we missed.

For those of you who don't know, for the last several years we have sold reusable cloth bags for $1.00 on Earth Day. Even though it can be a pain to remember to bring them, using your own bags instead of paper (trees) or plastic (never breaks down in landfills) can have a huge environmental impact. If you shop once a week and use three bags, you will use 156 bags in one year. Multiply that number by our membership of approximately 12,000, and you end up with 1.8 million bags.

Speaking of paper, one of the programs we're most excited about is getting members to sign up for our Wedge Newsletter Online. Now, instead of having the Newsletter mailed to your home, you can go to our website and sign up to receive it electronically. Think of all the interesting facts you can learn while eating lunch at your desk-like why it's bad to eat lunch at your desk!

We are very excited to announce that we changed the carry-out cutlery, located next to the exit in the front of store. We are now using 100% biodegradable forks, spoons and knives, made from potato starch. This cutlery is functional and compostable! More information is available at www.worldcentric.org.

A special guest for Earth Day was a representative from the HourCar carsharing program. John Barobs parked a Toyota Prius from the HourCar fleet in front of the store, and talked to folks about the benefits of the HourCar program. A Prius averages between 50-55 miles per gallon in the city, and the Wedge is proud to be an HourCar hub. To find out more, you can go to www.hourcar.org.

The last, and most lasting way that all of us can carry Earth Day forward is to buy locally-grown products. Many of you know that our Produce Department works diligently around the clock to source as many kinds of local produce as possible, but not everyone knows that this ethos permeates the entire store. From dairy and dips to steak and soap, the store as a whole has a mission to support local artists, artisans, and farmers. Buying locally not only helps to improve the environment by cutting down on the burning of fossil fuels during transport, it can also stabilize small family farms and create real, interconnected communities that can still thrive in the face of giant Agribusiness. Next shopping trip, take a moment to look for the "Local Company" signs that start in produce and wind all the way through the store.

Earth Day may be over for another year, but we all have an opportunity to make a positive, sustaining impact just by doing little things, everyday. Next year, make sure to stop by the table and say "hi" to the chicken. She gets a little lonely, sometimes.