Giant Eagle (one of the best-spread American supermarket chain with stores in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, and Maryland) is placing single-use synthetics in its crosshairs. The local supermarket retailer is starting a vital sustainability program centered on managing environmental events related to synthetics, waste, carbon emissions, sustainable goods, and worker commitment. Giant Eagle is using flight with the program by setting a goal of being independent of single-use plastics in its operations by 2025.
During this period, Giant Eagle will work to move away from single-use synthetics in areas such as flexible bags, straws, single-serve fresh food receptacles, and bottled refreshments. The organization is starting the enterprise by perpetrating to eliminate single-use plastic bags from all markets and is beginning separate flexible bag pilot programs in January 2020 in three markets: Pittsburgh, Cuyahoga County in Ohio, and Bexley, Ohio (a suburb of Columbus).
The Additional Strength
Giant Eagle is currently driving the Pittsburgh pilot performance at the Waterworks Market District in partnership with Allegheny County, the city of Pittsburgh, and Sustainable Pittsburgh. For six months, starting Wed., Jan. 15, 2020, the store will remove single-use plastic bags at its records.
Instead, the store will support the use of reusable containers, with insufficient time, “one perk per reusable bag used” development. This perk will be open for a short time at all Giant Eagle supermarkets chainwide in December. All Giant Eagle markets will also make reusable bags ready for purchase at $0.99 each.
To the additional strengthen the way of reusable bags, the Waterworks Market District will require a 10-cent fee per paper bag used. Buyers paying with forms of government-funded food marketing support (such as SNAP and WIC) will be free from the paper bag fee.
“When my great-grandfather and the four other authors started Giant Eagle nearly 90 years ago, they wanted to enhance life for people in their fields,” remarked Giant Eagle CEO and director Laura Shapira Karet. “Preserving our planet for future generations is a critical way we uphold this commitment today.”
The Recycled Materials
Giant Eagle is also doing to phasing out the use of the blue-colored single-use backup bags in all Pittsburgh stores in the coming months. Many Pittsburgh residents use the blue bags to gather recyclables at the curb. However, the blue bags create production issues for the machinery that sorts the recycled materials. Giant Eagle’s phasing out of its single-use blue plastic bags coincides with the city’s rollout of free recycling bins to all households it services.
The Waterworks Market District pilot program is being implemented with the endorsement of community organizations, including Allegheny CleanWays. Additionally, Giant Eagle has engaged the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University to share data and conduct research to recognize the impact of the pilot program on the broader community and environment.
Giant Eagle operates more than 470 stores throughout western Pennsylvania, north central Ohio, northern West Virginia, Maryland, and Indiana.
