Neighbors Share Small Actions that have Big Impact.
Tell us about your business or home initiatives that have saved money and the environment! Or learn from the people who share here.
Lunds/Byerlys
PLA: Keep an eye out for the letters PLA on what may seem like plastic containers holding your lettuce or croissants. Lunds use many PLA resin containers in the Deli and Bakery departments and they are easily identifiable by the PLA logo. PLA is a renewable plastic that is compostable in an industrial compost site. There are some limitations to PLA (it only can be used in cold foods with short shelf life requirements) that limit its use to some degree.
RPET: PET is the most recycled plastic resin. Many manufacturers are beginning to offer products made with recycled content (RPET) to reduce source materials. The resin includes 35% post consumer recycled content. They are using RPET in the deli for their packaged salad line as well as in the bakery in many of their prepack containers.
Bagasse: Bagasse is packaging produced from sugar cane fibers. Lunds is currently testing a line of Bagasse packaging in their Golden Valley store. This product is tree free and compostable. The line includes clamshells, bowls, trays, plates, and soufflé cups.
Starch Based Items:Lunds is currently testing a line of cutlery made from Potato Starch in two of their stores (Golden Valley and Central). This cutlery is compostable and made from a renewable resource. It is individually wrapped in a PLA liner.
In Addition:All Lunds and Byerly's paper front end bags are made from 100% recycled paper. Most of the towels and tissue used in the stores are made from 100% recycled paper and are Green Seal Certified. Their paper soup cups will soon be compostable, (previously not possible due to the poly liner), we are transitioning to the new product as we run out of existing inventory.
Take out boxes used in the restaurants; deli and catering are made from 100% recycled (35% post consumer) board.Plastic T-sacks and produce bags are recyclable, but also are oxo-degradable if they end up in a land fill or as litter. Foam meat trays used to package fresh meat items in-store are oxo-degradable so that they will use less space in a land fill.
Lunds at 50th and France
Lunds and Byerlys stores are doing great things to decrease their impact on the environment. Recently they underwent a major lighting retrofit at the 50th/France store: LED lighting technology was incorporated in many areas. Not only does LED lighting save on energy consumption, but the expected life of LED is 50,000 hours longer, which is at least double standard lighting. Here is an example of wattage saved on a one for one swap on the produce track light fixtures:
Old fixtures were 129 watts each
New LED fixtures are 22 watts each with an increase of lumens.
They also utilized white reflectors in the sales floor fixtures, which enabled them to reduce the number of lamps in the fixtures from 4 to 2, while still seeing an increase in lumens. Total store reduction was 71,000 watts, which is the equivalent of:
35,545 gallons of gasoline not used
735 barrels of oil not consumed
3 acres of forest preserved from deforestation
Amost 106 tons of waste recycled instead of landfilled
Electricity emissions from 26.9 homes for one year eliminated
Re-Use Specialist Nancy Lo!
There's no need for all the waste from your office or business to go to landfill or into the incinerator. Nancy finds people she knows to use various items or posts things on Craig's list where they're snapped up quickly. See below for some of the items Nancy is able to re-purpose:
padded envelopes - post on craigslist or twincitiesfreemarket.org
packing peanuts - post on craigslist or take to UPS store
bubblewrap - give to two people, one who has an antiques business and the other who ships stuff frequently
DVD and CD cases - post on craigslist
egg cartons - give to a friend whose mom has chickens
yarn - post on craigslist
misc. veterinary and pet supplies - post on craigslist
www.twinicitiesfreemarket.org is a venture of local waste prevention experts Eureka recycling. Check there for furniture, electronics, clothing and all sorts of building and craft supplies!
East Side Co-op
While our local Linden Hills Co-op will recycle plastic bags and yogurt containers, East Side Co-op has more more space and is currently collecting clam shell (e.g. blueberry, strawberry, take out) containers, and other non curbside collected plastics -#1, #2, #4, #5, and #6. Click here for more details. The plastics are recycled into plastic decking, fleece jackets and more!
France/44
When the building was designed, back in 2000, there was not the widespread attention to green design that there is now. That being said, the owners did make some deliberate design choices to make the building more efficient. First of all is the lighting. France/44 has large windows that they refuse to cover with sale posters. This allows loads of natural daylight to come through. They also attached motion sensors in all the less-used areas of the retail space (the basement, the restrooms, etc). Having a high ceiling allows for heat to rise in the summer, well away from the clientele and the product. This allows them to use less air conditioning in the hot months. In the winter months, the large Eastern and Southern exposures help to warm the building without excess heating expense.
A recent development for France/44 was to discontinue the use of their large Sodium Halide 400W lamps. By shutting them off, and depending solely on their track lighting, they've seen a substantial reduction in their electricity usage plus the ambiance is a hit with their guests. Finally, they replaced office lights with LED lamps which use around 1/10th of the electricity, last 50 times longer and contain no mercury.
One last thing... the staff use the back side of waste paper for printouts of interim reports and other draft documents. They also take some of the waste paper and cut them into notepad sheets for use on the sales floor.
For France/44, using resources efficiently is a business advantage that translates right to the bottom line.
Linea Palmisano My recent car purchase was my second ever- - and I had self-imposed criteria of a more fuel efficient vehicle (even though my previous one was an old, Japanese little hatchback with 30mpg). Enter my new life with a Mini! My husband Sam barely fits in it. I have turned it into an extreme sport of sorts, and only today (October) was the first time the top was officially 'up' on the convertible all summer. I'll be that person scooting around in my street-legal go cart with a ski mask and gloves on... maybe Galactic Pizza delivery girl is in my career future?
As I type this, Sam is out in the garage trying his hand at all kinds of bamboo flooring for a remodel project at our home. The nice part- - it comes prefinished and is a renewable resource... the bad- - very hard to cut thus far!
Madalyn Cioci -Hybrid Cars
The key when buying a new car, if your concern is either emissions or cost to put gas in its tank, is to look at overall mpg as well as city/hwy mpg numbers. Assume the window sticker estimate will be optimistic -- because they get those numbers from testing the car on a treadmill indoors rather than on the open road. There are hybrids out there that are great, and use the technology to up the overall efficiency of the vehicle -- the Prius and Honda Civic fall into that category. But there are hybrids out there that use the technology to boost the overall power available to the engine. I've heard the Camry falls into that category. So again, it all comes back to how many miles per gallon you get. There are some regular vehicles that are little and get good mileage -- the Toyota Yaris, for example.
Re: my Prius. I love it. In the winter I get about 37-39 mpg, in the summer I get about 51-53 mpgs. It depends a lot on how you drive it too...but it gives you immediate second by second feedback to help you adjust your driving habits (slow stops and starts, lower speeds, coast when you can, etc.). It isn't a sports car...not very quick acceleration to high speed, but once you get it to speed, it does fine. I drive it at 60, my husband at 70 and we're both satisfied (except I wish my husband would drive slower!) We have two boys, and our other car is a Volvo Station wagon. We prefer the Prius for long trips...it is spacious inside and very comfortable. not as much trunk as the Volvo, but it holds more than you expect.
I've heard that the big battery will need to be replaced at 100,000 miles and is very expensive, about $4000. And the small engine starting battery under the hood is expensive -- $400. We found out the hard way that you can't use the Prius to jump start other cars. You should know that going in. Other than that, it has been all good for us. We get about 500 miles to 10 gallons of gas. Oh, I didn't touch on FlexFuel vehicles. I'm not a big ethanol fan -- but that's another post.
Why Recycling is the way to go:
Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a 100 watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for three hours or a TV for two hours.
Recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to power a TV for three hours
Recycling one ton of plastic can save 1-2 thousand gallons of gas
Recycling on ton of paper saves 17 trees, two barrels of oil, 7000 gallons of water, and 4,100 kilowatt hours of electricity - enough energy to power the average American home for five months.
If everyone in the US recycled just 1/10th of their newsprint, we would save the estimated equivalent of about 25 million trees a year.
resin containers in the Deli and Bakery departments and they are easily identifiable by the PLA logo. PLA is a renewable plastic that is compostable in an industrial compost site. There are some limitations to PLA (it only can be used in cold foods with short shelf life requirements) that limit its use to some degree.
Lunds is currently testing a line of cutlery made from Potato Starch in two of their stores (Golden Valley and Central). This cutlery is compostable and made from a renewable resource. It is individually wrapped in a PLA liner. 
lighting retrofit at the 50th/France store:
There's no need for all the waste from your office or business to go to landfill or into the incinerator. Nancy finds people she knows to use various items or posts things on Craig's list where they're snapped up quickly. See below for some of the items Nancy is able to re-purpose:
My recent car purchase was my second ever- - and I had self-imposed criteria of a more fuel efficient vehicle (even though my previous one was an old, Japanese little hatchback with 30mpg). Enter my new life with a Mini! My husband Sam barely fits in it. I have turned it into an extreme sport of sorts, and only today (October) was the first time the top was officially 'up' on the convertible all summer. I'll be that person scooting around in my street-legal go cart with a ski mask and gloves on... maybe Galactic Pizza delivery girl is in my career future? 