How Do We Minimize our Environmental Impact?

Environmental responsibility at Eat Healthy Foods includes the following measures:

• We model low water low maintenance gardening out front with a carpet of native wildflowers, and grasses, some of which are endangered.  We give away cuttings to anyone who wants them;
• We sell and promote white dutch clover, a low maintenance, beautiful xeriscape ground cover;
• We recycle all our cardboard and paper;
• We reuse shopping bags and sell reusable cotton bags.  We have not had to buy a bag in years, nor has mother nature had to supply raw materials or energy to produce bags for us.
• We recycle our plastic wrapping materials.
• We donate tired vegetables either to poor customers, or to local soup kitchens. 
• Our vegetable waste goes either to feed some of the chickens we sell or to compost at the farm.  Sometimes when the chicken farmer  isn’t coming for awhile and we aren’t going to the farm, we pitch it in the dumpster, but most of it is turned into chickens or soil.
• Our energy use is through the roof, so we have a plan to get the store off the grid using wind generators.  This is unfortunately going to have to wait until the next round of renovations, but we have a significant environmental impact with our electrical use, and the right thing to do is to get some windmills and eliminate this impact.  In the meantime, the food must be kept at appropriate temperatures.  We do use efficient lights;
• We reuse the back side of our papers either for notes or for receiving faxes.
• Many of our staff bike , bus or walk to work.  At this time, I myself seem to find excuses to use my truck most days (eg: I've got to deliver food to soup kitchen, pick up my son, get a computer monitor to replace the one that broke, etc), but usually there is a need of a truck at some point in my day.
• We sell organically grown open pollinated seeds and organically grown, open pollinated bedding plants.
• Once I am done building the store, which is where the money has gone to so far, the profits are for the environmental movement, and other causes I find worthy.  You’ll hear more about by clicking this link.
• Our paltry bit of glass and metal wastes are recycled.
• Wood waste goes to my fire pit.
• We sell recycled products and reusable products such as coffee and tea filters, cloth shopping bags and menstrual pads.

We dispose of about one box of mixed waste every day or two. 

Recycling is good because:

• It conserves valuable resources (eg: metal or wood), and allows less mining or logging to take place, leaving more ecosystems undisturbed. 
• It almost always uses less energy to produce recycled products than products from raw materials.  For example, making recycled aluminum requires only 5% as much energy as making aluminum from bauxite.  For paper, the saving is more like 35%, plus all the energy used by the machines used to cut and move the trees in the first place.
• Instead of creating landfills and using up valuable space that way, you create valuable commodities and no landfill.

We are committed to being a model environmental business, both for the sake of the environment and as an example for other businesses.  We will continue to explore ways to lessen our environmental footprint.