market - The Environment Report

Organics Rotting in Bad Economy

Shopping at organic foods stores is one thing consumers are cutting back on (Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of the USDA)

Watching paychecks shrink and
retirement funds dissolve is making people
change their buying habits. Many are
skipping things like natural foods because
they’re seen as luxuries. But Julie Grant
reports some analysts say this is just a
short term trend:

Transcript

Michelle DeSalvo’s daughter plans to go to college next
year. But her husband might need to take a pay cut just to
keep his job. So they’re trying to save money wherever
possible. That means no more shopping at the natural foods
store.

Michelle DeSalvo: “It’s definitely more expensive. You have
to go to things that are less expensive and natural is
definitely not that.”

Julie Grant: “So what has changed in your shopping habits?”

Michelle DeSalco: “I go to Wal-Mart. (laughs) Yeah, for
food. It’s cheaper.”

Not everyone is rushing to Wal-Mart.

Brenda Fisher says her family is struggling to pay for two
kids in college, and they’re looking for different ways to buy
food. She used to stop at the butcher shop at Whole Foods
– the national, natural foods supermarket. But not anymore.

“So I would buy their meats because their meats are
incredible. So um, I just can’t afford it. I would actually like
to buy a whole cow from a farmer, because they’re cheaper.
And I just have to get the money together.”

Okay, so not everyone wants to buy a cow. But a lot of
people are moving away from things that seem more
expensive – like natural and organic products.

In recent years, those foods have seen huge sales growth.
But as the economy has turned sour, so have their sales.
Whole Foods Store has seen a considerable sales drop at its
stores. And the company’s stock prices plunged more than
70% this year.

Nancy Koehn is professor of the history of retailing and
consumer behavior at the Harvard business school.
She says some people see upscale stores such as Whole
Foods as an indulgence – and that’s not what they’re
wanting.

“I think we will see, we are seeing, a rush away from a lot of
luxury right now.”

Koehn says that’s short term. She says consumers have
been floored by the tanking of the stock market and the
vulnerability of the financial systems. And they’ve done
something we haven’t seen in 25 years: they’ve stopped
buying.

But Koehn says this is just one moment. She says people
will walk back into stores. But they will have revised
priorities for their homes and families.

“There’s no way anyone’s coming out of this moment without
being effected by it. It’s a much more complicated story than
the rush to Wal-Mart.”

Koehn says natural foods stores, like Whole Foods, and
other environmentally-centered companies, are actually in
just the right place for the long term economic trend. When
consumers start buying again, she thinks, many will spend
money in places that are taking care of workers, animals,
and the environment.

“And I think we’re going to see that the same things that built
Whole Foods, that have made the environment and our
interconnectedness so important to people, and moved that
from item number 10 or 20 on people’s lists of important
issues up to the top 2 to 4. Those aren’t going away because
we’re in the trough of a business cycle.”

Koehn expects that many people will spend their holiday
money at big box discount stores. But she says many who
feel they’ve been treated badly in the economic downturn will
go back to the companies they think treat people and the
environment better.

Koehn expects that by early next year, companies that get
behind sustainable products will wind up being the economic
winners.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Cranberries Burst Into New Markets

Cranberry harvest in New Jersey (Photo by Keith Weller, courtesy of the USDA)

One thing we can be thankful for
this Thanksgiving is cranberry relish.
After a sour decade of collapsing prices,
the industry has rebounded with a record
season. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

One thing we can be thankful for
this Thanksgiving is cranberry relish.
After a sour decade of collapsing prices,
the industry has rebounded with a record
season. Julie Grant reports:

In the late 1990s, the market for cranberries started drying up. Americans didn’t
seem to crave the pucker of our native berry. Some years growers were getting as
little as 8 dollars a barrel and they didn’t know if they could stay in business much
longer.

Today, they’re getting as much as 150 dollars per barrel.

Dawn Gates-Allen is fourth generation cranberry grower on Cape Cod.

“It’s been ten years of suppressed grower return for the price per barrel.”

Prices are rebounding because cranberries have gained popularity as a healthful
fruit overseas. Europe and Japan have started importing a third of America’s
cranberry crop.

But even with that new demand, you shouldn’t see a big jump in prices at the
supermarket this year: the weather has been great for cranberries and there’s a
bumper crop.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Recycling Prices Down in the Dumps

(Photo by Julie Grant)

The recycling industry is the
latest to take a hit from the world’s
economic problems. Rebecca Williams
has more:

Transcript

The recycling industry is the
latest to take a hit from the world’s
economic problems. Rebecca Williams
has more:

The bottom has dropped out of most commodity markets: recycled paper,
metals, everything. It’s tied to the collapse of economies worldwide.

Tom Watson is with the National Waste Prevention Coalition. He says
recycling companies’ profits are way down.

“A lot of it is connected with China – and the demand for fewer products
there so they need less of the recycled materials for the packaging.”

Watson says China is buying a lot less of our recycled paper and cardboard
to make packaging, because we’re all buying a lot fewer products from
China.

That means recyclables are stacking up in a lot of places. Recyclers are
starting to talk about charging garbage companies to drop stuff off. And that
might mean we’ll be paying higher trash bills.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

How Much Help From Offshore Drilling?

Oil is a global commodity, so oil drilled in the US would not have to stay here (Photo courtesy of the Minerals Management Service)

There’s been a lot of talk lately
about drilling for more oil off the American
coasts. Rebecca Williams reports that oil
is not required to go to the US markets:

Transcript

There’s been a lot of talk lately
about drilling for more oil off the American
coasts. Rebecca Williams reports that oil
is not required to go to the US markets:

Oil is a global commodity. Oil drilled in the US would not have to stay
here.

But most of it probably would.

Alan Good is with Morningstar. He analyzes the oil and gas industries.

“It would generally go straight to America because it would incur the lowest
transportation costs to get to the United States refineries.”

But Good says it would be at least a decade before that oil would come
online. And even then it’s not clear how much offshore drilling here would
reduce imports from the Middle East.

“It will help somewhat with imports but it’s not likely to make a huge dent.”

And he says it’ll probably have little effect on the price you pay at the pump
because world demand drives oil prices.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Peace Out, Plastic Bags

Whole foods Store Manager Sherry Wiseman, says her Cleveland store hasn’t had plastic bags since February and her customers have hardly noticed. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)
Wal-Mart stores are stocked solely with plastic bags and paper is not an option. The company says it won’t discontinue plastic in favor of paper, because it says plastic bags are more suited for items sold at its stores. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)

It’s one of the eternal questions, ‘paper or
plastic?’ They’re both recyclable, but only paper
bags come from a renewable resource. And since only
1% of all the plastic bags on earth are actually
recycled, Lisa Ann Pinkerton reports some cities and
even one national company are wondering why we need
plastic bags at all:

Transcript

(garbage truck sounds)

Americans send around 100 billion plastic bags to landfills every
year, where they’re supposed to be compacted by bulldozers.

(sound of plastic bag in the wind)

That is, unless they catch the wind and transform into mini
parachutes.

Carmine Camillo is a spokesman for the national company Waste Management.

“The tree lines and fence lines can be littered with bags, until we get
a chance to get out there and clean them up.”

This happens so much around the world, it’s picked up the nickname ‘tree condoms’. Besides that,
they clog storm drains, and
eventually end up in waterways and oceans, where fish
mistake them for jellyfish.

The solution, it would seem, is to recycle them.

But shopper Mary Jo Wickliffe says that’s too much of a hassle.

“You unload your groceries and you go home and throw them away. That’s what I do with them.”

Since Wickliffe shops at the organic market Whole Foods she
says she’s been doing less of that. Because the
chain recently bagged the plastic.

Cleveland Store Manager Chery Wiseman says to stop offering plastic bags is a decision that goes against busines school 101.

“It costs us more money to buy our paper recyclable bags, but we
feel that’s worth it to keep the plastics out.”

Whole Foods’ paper bags are made from 100% recycled content and
shopper Bruce Kane says it’s about time plastic went out of
style.

“I notice that China has fines for stores that use plastics. I think it’s a
positive trend and I’m glad to see it coming to Whole Foods and coming to the
United States.”

The trendsetter in this country is San Francisco. It’s the only city to successfully ban plastic bags.

New York City, Annapolis, Maryland, New Haven,
Connecticut, Santa Monica, and Portland, are looking to shun plastic too. But the bruising the city of Oakland took might make them think twice.

A plastics industry group, called the Coalition to Support Plastic
Bag Recycling sued Oakland over its ban and won. It
claimed the city didn’t do its homework on alternatives such as compost-
able plastic bags or a recycling program.

Sharon Kanise is a spokeswoman for the plastics industry at the
American Chemistry Council.

“We certainly hope that the city of Oakland will work with the state of
California on recycling, because it
doesn’t belong in the roadways, it belongs in the recycling bin.”

Plastic bags are made from petroleum and natural gas, but
Kanise says their manufacture and transport uses 70% less
energy and produces half the carbon dioxide that making paper
bags does.

But for some, choosing between paper and plastic isn’t enough. A few people are starting to shop with reusable cloth bags. Some
stores sell them for about a dollar and Wal-Mart recently gave
away 1 million free to its customers.

But the concept of bringing
their own bags to the store is still foreign to some Wal-Mart
shoppers.

Customer 1: “It really doesn’t matter to me, but I’m going to need a
bigger bag than this.”

Customer 2: “It’s easier just to throw these out and come back to
the store with nothing in our hands.“

Customer 3: “Well, it’s just becoming popular, so I’ll start to.”

Whether it’s paper, plastic, or cloth, each can be environmentally-friendly, if
consumers go to the extra effort. But if people keep throwing them away, local governments might attempt to
reduce plastic bag use. A move the plastics industry will certainly
contest.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.

Sad State of Suv Sales

High gas prices are making it difficult for SUV owners to sell them (Photo by Ben VanWagoner)

With higher gas prices, SUV and light
truck owners are scrambling to trade in their
large cars for smaller more fuel efficient ones.
But, they’re shocked to learn how little they can
get. Lisa Ann Pinkerton reports:

Transcript

The auto industry says, sales of new SUVs and light trucks have basically stalled and the
market is flooded with used models. That’s got used car dealerships across the country
offering owners about 20% less than their vehicles are worth.

Art Spinella, president of the auto research firm, CNW, says even at a steep discount,
Sport Utility Vehicles and light trucks are taking about a month longer to sell than they did a
year ago.

“If you need a sport utility for some reason, now is probably the best time to buy one. But
if you’re trying to sell a sport utility you may be better off just parking it and keeping it
until the market either turns around or the over supply that exists right now kind of dwindles down.”

Research shows a lot of SUV owners are deciding to not to drive them.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.

Food Prices to Stay High

Corn production in Colorado. (Photo by Scott Bauer, courtesy of the USDA Agricultural Research Service)

Food prices are expected to keep rising in the
coming year. That’s at least partly because farmers plan
to plant less corn. Dustin Dwyer reports:

Transcript

Food prices are expected to keep rising in the
coming year. That’s at least partly because farmers plan
to plant less corn. Dustin Dwyer reports:

Jim Hilker is an agricultural economist at Michigan State University. He says the
demand for corn is high right now.

“Ethanol’s probably the biggest driver of it, but there’s also been very strong corn
exports.”

Hilker says those exports are going to countries where the wheat crop has
come in lower than expected.

But with all the demand for corn, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says
farmers across the country are planning to plant about 8% less
corn this year, compared to last year. Last year farmers did plant more corn
than they had in more than 50 years. This year, corn production should still
be high, but it might not keep pace with demand.

Hilker says that could mean higher prices for food.

But he says there are a lot of other factors to consider when it comes to
food prices. He says gas is a big one, since food has to be transported.

For The Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

Food Prices on the Rise

Produce section of a supermarket in VA. (Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of the USDA)

Food prices are going up worldwide. A new survey
by the American Farm Bureau Federation finds supermarket
checkout costs have risen nearly 8% this year.
Julie Grant has more:

Transcript

Food prices are going up worldwide. A new survey
by the American Farm Bureau Federation finds supermarket
checkout costs have risen nearly 8% this year.
Julie Grant has more:

Retail food prices usually increase 3% per year. But over the last year the
cost of flour, cheese, bread, meat, oil, and produce is up – by more than
double the average.

The United Nations has predicted prices will stabilize in the long term. But
that consumers worldwide will face at least 10 more years of rapidly rising
food prices.

Commodity prices for corn, wheat, soybeans and other staples have been
skyrocketing over the past year – to more than double 2006 prices.
The higher costs are due in part to weather affecting crops, and growing
demand in China and India.

Economists also point toward the increased use of grains for ethanol and
other biofuels, putting pressure on food prices.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

A Closer Look at Chinese Organics

Produce section of a supermarket in VA. (Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of USDA)

More companies are importing organic
products from China and other countries. But
contaminated pet food, tainted toothpaste,
and unauthorized antibiotics in fish have been
imported to the U.S. from China. Now, some people are
concerned about organic foods from China. Julie
Grant reports:

Transcript

When you see that round USDA organic seal on a carton of
milk, boxed foods, or bananas , it means that on some farm,
somewhere, something like this happened:

(farm inspection sound)

Inspector: “All righty. Anything under the box on the far
right.”

Farmer: “That’s the burnout. Which I haven’t used for 3 or 4
years.”

An inspector walks around looking at the greenhouse, the
barn and the fields, in the greenhouse, and in the barn. He
works for an agency that’s accredited by the USDA to certify
farms as organic. He’s making sure nothing is happening on
the farm that’s prohibited by the National Organic Standards.

But small farms like this one are no longer the norm in
organics. Organic products have become a big business all
around the world.

So people are wondering… who inspects those farms?

(store sound)

Sheila Rombach is a buyer for a small natural foods store.
Like a lot of people, she’s a little nervous about the safety of
food coming from China. Last year’s pet food scare and
poisonous toothpaste are still fresh in many people’s minds.

Rombach’s customers pay a premium for ‘organic’ foods.
She wonders how the USDA can certify that farms all the
way in China are following organic rules.

“I guess it crossed mind because of all the negative publicity
about things manufactured in China. I want to be sure that
the items grown under the organic label are truly organic.”

It’s such a concern that one large health food chain, Trader
Joe’s, is taking all Chinese imports off its shelves. Trader
Joe’s plans to have Chinese garlic, ginger, and all other
single-ingredient foods out of its 300 stores this spring.

But the U.S. Department of Agriculture maintains if it says
organic, it’s truly organic. Barbara Robinson is chief
administrator of the USDA’s National Organic Program. She
says foreign products go through the same process as those
grown here.

“So, if the product is coming from India, or the product is
coming from Australia, and you want to market in the United States – then
you need a certifying agent who is accredited by us.”

Robinson says all certifying agents accredited by the USDA
should be enforcing the same organic rules. If a product has
that little round seal, Robinson says consumers can trust it
meets the U.S.’s National Organic Standards.

But enforcing the rules isn’t always that easy. The USDA is
having difficulty making sure those rules are consistently
applied on U.S. farms. So how can the agency be so
confident about farms in other countries?

One expert on Chinese agriculture and politics says that’s a
good question. Paul Thiers is a political science professor at
Washington State University who’s been visiting farms in
China since the early 1990s.

“There is some difficulty, I think, in expecting people from
outside of China to really get far enough in and understand
what’s going on in political and economic conditions of rural
China.”

Thiers says many Chinese farms are run by the local
government. Others are run by private managers with
peasant farmers working the land.

“In some places, peasant farmers who were purported to be
part of organic production, who were on land that was
certified, couldn’t tell me what organic was, had no
conception of different production standards. And all they
said was, ‘we just sell our product to the government’.”

Thiers says at that time, five or ten years ago, farmers were
probably using chemicals, even though they were selling
food labeled organic.

Thiers expects that China’s organic farming practices are
improving, though. He says people in Chinese cities are becoming
concerned about food safety and want to buy organics. But
the USDA has to rely on organic certifiers in China. And with
the rapid growth of organic farms, no one is sure they’re
actually meeting U.S. standards.

Thiers says there is one consolation. At least organic farms
are inspected by someone. Conventional farms don’t get
those kinds of visits from inspectors.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Business Trash Audits

Plant manager of Anheuser-Busch points out the plastic labels of the beer bottles now being recycled. (Photo by Karen Kasler)
Lee says the goal for Anheuser-Busch is to be the most responsible manufacturers they can be. (Photo by Karen Kasler)
The labeling machine inside the plant. (Photo by Karen Kasler)

Chain restaurants and retailers often test
their latest services and products in Columbus, Ohio
before launching them nationwide. It’s one of the
nation’s big test markets. But ‘going green’ is not
a trend that’s going well. Karen Kasler reports
recycling rates are well below the national average.
But businesses in this key market are beginning to
show more interest:

Transcript

Columbus often bills itself as the nation’s test market. It’s demographics are seen as a reflection
of the nation as a whole. But this national test market is not at the front of the curve when it
comes recycling and other ‘green practices.’ For example, many companies around the country
have going green in the last few years, but businesses in Columbus are just starting to test the
waters.

John Remy works for SWACO, the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio It operates the area’s
landfill. Remy has only recently noticed a sudden jump in the number of calls he’s getting every
day:

“The boss wants the business to go green, and so the employees are left to, how do I go
green? And so they call us and want to know, how do I go green? And how do I do it five
minutes before I called you?”

SWACO advises businesses to audit their waste — to dig into trash cans and dumpsters and see
how much paper, plastic, glass, cardboard, food and other material is there and can be
recycled. Some big corporations were already working on that. Columbus’ Anheuser-Busch
brewery is one of big brewer’s 12 plants nationwide. Plant manager Kevin Lee says “green beer”
is not just a St. Patrick’s Day thing here. He says it’s a way of doing business, from the way the
bottles are labeled:

“The backing off of these labels that are applied onto the Bud Light bottle, we recycle the
backing, and there was approximately 66,000 miles of backing a year that is plastic
backing that’s recycled.”

To the cans that fall off the filling lines and end up in hoppers:

“And we send those cans back to a recycling area where the cans are crushed, they’re
sent for aluminum recycling purposes…”

Lee says the idea is to save money and cut down on trash:

“Everything that is consumed off the line, whether it’s the waste beer or the
waste cans or the waste bottles or cardboard, we want to take those materials, treat them
or recycle them, so that we reduce our demand on the environment certainly, reduce our
costs, and that allows us to be the most responsible manufacturer we can be.”

Multi-million dollar automated operations can afford to smoothly snap new green technology
into their production lines, but it’s a little more hands-on in smaller companies and in non-profit
organizations.

Catholic priest David Gwinner did things the old-fashioned way at St. Paul’s parish just north of
Columbus. He stands by one of two eight-cubic-yard recycling bins outside the church offices.
And he says he started by sorting the trash on his own:

“Many days I would take the recycling, separate it and take it in my car.
Yes, in my Oldsmobile sitting over there and my dog, Margaret. And it started to be two,
three trips a day.”

After a few months of dumpster diving, Gwinner decided to organize the St. Paul’s staff in a
recycling effort. In the last year, Gwinner says everyone has gotten in on it – workers in the
administrative offices, guests in the meeting rooms, and the thousand kids in the school. Now,
the trash dumpsters are emptied three times a week instead of every day, which Gwinner says
has saved the parish 2,400 dollars over the last year. But Gwinner says it’s about more
than money. He’s preaching that this is a “partnership with creation,” and now his mission is to
get that message out to his 12,000 parishioners, many of whom own businesses:

“And if they had one or two or three pounds a day, times 12,000, times 365 days a year.
That tells the story of how huge… it’s a million tons a year that SWACO is receiving that’s
going into the ground. And they believe that a great percent of that is recyclable.”

A study a few years ago concluded 60 percent of commercial and residential trash is
recyclable, with paper and plastics the most common things thrown away. But even as
businesses are trying to take their bottom lines to zero when it comes to waste, their employees
may not be taking that attitude home. 88 percent of people in this test market town don’t
recycle. That number is nearly four times the stat from a recent Harris poll which shows the
national non-recycling average is 23 percent.

For the Environment Report, I’m Karen Kasler.

Tag: market

Organics Rotting in Bad Economy

Transcript

Related Links

Cranberries Burst Into New Markets

Transcript

Related Links

Recycling Prices Down in the Dumps

Transcript

Related Links

How Much Help From Offshore Drilling?

Transcript

Related Links

Peace Out, Plastic Bags

Transcript

Related Links

Sad State of Suv Sales

Transcript

Related Links

Food Prices to Stay High

Transcript

Related Links

Food Prices on the Rise

Transcript

Related Links

A Closer Look at Chinese Organics

Transcript

Related Links

Business Trash Audits

Transcript

Related Links