Green ‘Stop-N-Shops’

  • Melissa Rosen and her husband Greg Horos opened Locali's - LA's first "ecovenience" mart. (Photo by Devine Browne)

Not that long ago, if you wanted to buy eco-friendly at the grocery store, your options might have been limited to the granola and beans in the bulk bins. Then stores started carrying organic produce. Later vegetarian fast food appeared. Devin Browne reports now eco-friendly is hitting convenience stores:

Transcript

Not that long ago, if you wanted to buy eco-friendly at the grocery store, your options might have been limited to the granola and beans in the bulk bins. Then stores started carrying organic produce. Later vegetarian fast food appeared. Devin Browne reports now eco-friendly is hitting convenience stores:

They’re called ecovenience stores and they’re showing up all over the country. The point is that they sell convenience store food, only greener.

(sound of a store)

“This is our organic hot pretzel, we have organic hot pretzels. It’s organic flour.”

That’s Melissa Rosen; she co-owns a new ecovenience store in Los Angeles, called Locali. Which is actually spelled L-O-C-A-L-I.

And they’ve got hot pretzels, but organic. Hot dogs, but grass-fed. The store even looks like a convenience store: It’s in a strip mall, it’s near a freeway. They’ve got cold drinks in the fridge and impulse buys like candy near the cash register. The customers are in a hurry, but a happy hurry. They rave about the chips

“It is a flavor explosion in your mouth, it is beyond savory.”

and the slushies.

“Slushies! There you go, the slushies are amazing.”

But then you get closer and you see that the cold drinks are not soda or beer: They’re Kombucha, the fermented tea. The candy is vegan gummy bears and organic lollipops. And the slushie, their signature item, is sweetened with agave.

There are a few 7-11 staples that are missing from the shelves, like cigarettes and lotto tickets. The owners say there are no green versions of those.

Some of Locali’s products are really pragmatic and not that exciting like energy efficient light bulbs and ecological laundry drops. Others are kind of sensational, silly, really.

“For example the vegan condoms. What is that, what is Glyde? I didn’t know my condoms weren’t vegan.”

So, vegan condoms, vegan caviar. Snow cones sweetened with brown rice syrup. They have this really big variety of products that have never been greened before.

And so the question becomes: will new green products like these, however silly, really mean new green consumers? Matt Kahn is an Environmental Economist at UCLA. HE thinks maybe so.

“So the goal might be to create buzz. That if you only sell green light bulbs and a tofu turkey burger, people might say oh yeah, that’s the green place. But if you do some truly wacky stuff, generating this green buzz, might tip, that even a Dick Cheney might come with his grandson hearing that it’s this wacky.”

Which is more or less the point – Locali wants to recruit new green consumers. Consumers who right now live in neighborhoods that don’t really have supermarkets and so they buy most of their food at liquor and convenience stores.

Of course, one of the problems will probably be price. A 16 oz slushie at Locali is $5.49, while a 22 oz slurpee at 7-11 is just $1.40. But Kahn, the economist, thinks because Locali is smaller and more flexible than say a Whole Foods, it might actually have a better shot at making it in new neighborhoods.

“And so a smaller business might have to pay only a couple hundred thousand dollars rather then multi million dollars to build a big boxed store. And that lower fixed cost of entering a market makes it more likely that smaller green stores might experiment more.”

And apparently, the ecovenience experiment is something that a lot of people want to try. In the first six days of business, the owners received phone calls from people in Seattle and DC and cities all over Southern California. And they all asked the same thing: how soon can we open a locali in our local neighborhood.

For The Environment Report, I’m Devin Browne.

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Green Weddings

  • Many couples are trying to be more environmentally-conscious with their big day (Photo courtesy of Kentucky State Parks)

At least two million weddings will be held
in the US this year. Many of them will be
extravagant, limousine-led events. But some couples’
walk down the aisle will more like a stroll on an
environmentally-friendly path. It’s known as a green
wedding. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

At least two million weddings will be held
in the US this year. Many of them will be
extravagant, limousine-led events. But some couples’
walk down the aisle will more like a stroll on an
environmentally-friendly path. It’s known as a green
wedding. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

A big budget wedding with limos, large reception halls and high catering bills can put a lot of
stress on the bride and groom. It might get at least one of the betrothed some scream time on
the cable TV show ‘Bridezillas’.

“Alright guys, I need my bridesmaids: Jackie, Amy, Kelly, Andrea, Harley, and Deb.”

But other couples are aiming for a more low-key, ‘we love each other and we love the planet’
approach to their happy day. Some wedding planners are paying attention.

“Again it only holds about 100 people, so you have cut your wedding list down, which is actually
a good thing for green as well, because then you’re not producing as much transportation cost.”

That’s Tanya Van Kirk of the company Point Zero Events. She not only had a green wedding
herself, but now advises couples on their way to the altar on how they can be more energy and
environmentally conscious. She says the green wedding movement is small but growing.

“I’ve had a couple of requests from brides. This is definitely a topic that’s coming up more often,
and I just choose to pursue that option myself, so I’m going to encourage as many brides and
event people as I can to take part in it.”

Van Kirk says a green wedding may be the right thing for environmentally aware couples in a
tight economy. She says besides maybe choosing smaller venues, they might go electricity-free
and use natural light. Other recommendations are: to register for gifts at an eco-conscious store
or website, buy locally-made wedding supplies, and consider using caterers that offer organic
food.

“We use local eggs, organic butter.”

At a recent bridal fair, Lisa Malmarowski of Outpost Natural Foods hawked her store’s version of
green catering. She contends it’s not necessarily more expensive than a regular caterer.

“You can really customize things to people’s budgets. So, if someone wants a very simple
wedding which also sorta fits into a green theme, we can do that very simply. And we’re really willing
to work with people – if they want to use things like their own dishes, or make some of the food
themselves, and we’ll supplement it.”

Some women with weddings scheduled for next year say they are hoping to be as green as
possible.

Katie Spaulding says one of her first steps may be her choice of wedding invitations.

“I like the idea of recycled paper, doing invitations like that. And I know that’s a huge trend right
now, and I’d consider doing that as well.”

Wedding planners warn it can be more difficult to convince the groom to go along with a green
wedding.

But bride-to-be Casey Kircher isn’t having that problem with her fiancé, Chris Verdig.
He seems ready to say ‘I do’ want green.

Chris: “It sounds fantastic. I’m just the groom.”

Casey: “I think that’s his catch phrase – ‘sounds fantastic’ – anything I ask.”

Well, that might be a good start toward their life together. And that green wedding might turn into a green partnership.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

(music) “I see skies of blue, and clouds of white. The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.”

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Relief on the Horizon for Allergy Sufferers?

  • To those who may recoil in terror from this picture, relief from peanut allergies may just be a vaccine away. (Photo by Mike Froese)

A new vaccine that reduces food allergies in dogs could
some day help people who suffer dangerous reactions to food like
peanuts, milk and wheat. The vaccine is also more evidence in
support of the so-called “hygiene hypothesis.” The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:

Transcript

A new vaccine that reduces food allergies in dogs could some day help people who suffer
dangerous reactions to food like peanuts, milk and wheat. The vaccine is also more
evidence in support of the so-called “hygiene hypothesis.” The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:


Allergies to foods like peanuts have become much more common over the past 20 years.
Some researchers believe it’s because, as a hygiene-conscious society, we’re no
longer exposing our bodies to infections that stimulate the immune system and protect
us from allergies. Pediatrician Dale Umetsu of Stanford University mixed a component
of Listeria bacterium and peanuts into a vaccine. He then gave it to dogs
with allergies so severe that one peanut made them sick.


“After the treatment, the dogs could tolerate up, on average, to 30 to 40 peanuts,
so this was quite an increase and the effect lasted several months, at least,
after the treatment.”


Umetsu says it could be five years or more before a vaccine is available for human trials.
A vaccine could help millions of people with food allergies.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tracy Samilton.

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