Vons Celebrates 10 Years of Landmark Compost Program
This week, Vons celebrates 10 years since it became the first supermarket chain to realize a composting program for its produce trims and culls. Read More
This week, Vons celebrates 10 years since it became the first supermarket chain to realize a composting program for its produce trims and culls. Through the program, Vons has diverted 377,826 tons of organic material from California’s dwindling landfill space — the equivalent of 47,228 trash trucks.
The groundbreaking program began modestly in 1994 with tests in 28 stores in San Diego, but grew quickly, and the program was implemented in all 326 stores in California and southern Nevada within one year.
Compost is created when tree, brush and grass clippings are mixed with produce department trim and wax-coated cardboard and wooden crates. While the program was initially designed to streamline waste for the grocery chain, it quickly became clear that the compost could also be providing a sorely needed resource to local schools for use in school gardens and on athletic fields.
“Vons is very proud of this unique and historic program, designed to not only help the environment, but to provide local schools with the materials they need,” Vons president Tom Keller said. “After 10 years, our program is still going strong and is now a model for others in the industry of how a compost program can work.”
Last year, Vons generated enough compost for use on over 4,000 acres of California farmland. To put that figure in context, if you parked all of the trash trucks end-to-end that did not go to the trash dumps last year because of the Vons compost program, they would stretch from Los Angeles City Hall to Disneyland. Last year, Vons donated compost to more than 40 schools.
Vons, a division of Safeway Inc., is one of the largest food and drug retailers in North America based on annualized sales of approximately $33 billion. The company operates over 1,700 stores in the United States and Canada, with 326 stores under the Vons and Pavilions banners.
