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How Green is Whole Foods?
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| SOURCE: Interview with Paul Hawken in Grist Magazine |
POSTED: 05/24/04 02:01:40 EDT |
Grist: What are some companies that you think are successfully forging new, sustainable corporate practices?
Hawken: Hmm ... uh, well ... there aren't too many, and people don't know them so well. Hartmann in Denmark, they do molded-fiber packaging. Uh, let's see. Natura in Brazil is a cosmetic company that works very closely with indigenous people and farmers in Brazil. It works with poor people to develop cash crops that are productive and sustainable for their cultures. Novo Nordisk, they do a lot of work with enzymes that save energy and eliminate chemical use. There's Plambeck in Germany that does great wind parks. STMicroelectronics is a company doing very interesting stuff with a new solar photovoltaic technology that could make solar energy cheaper than all other forms of electricity. Svenska Cellulosa is doing some great things with respect to sustainable forestry. Vestas, the big wind company in Denmark. Easto, a large organic produce company in Europe which does a lot of biodynamic stuff. And of course there is ShoreBank, the enterprise work that Ecotrust is doing, Patagonia, Cooperative Bank in England, and more.
Grist: So it doesn't sound like there are many companies in America that you're excited about. Can you compare some of these European companies to American companies? For instance, can you elaborate on why, say, Whole Foods doesn't strike you as an example of a good company?
Hawken: Whole Foods dismantles local food webs and doesn't foster what the organic movement is about. The organic and natural-food movement that I helped kick off in the late '60s was the beginning of recreating regional food webs. Local stores started all around the country and they began to source locally, and whatever they couldn't get locally they got regionally, and whatever they couldn't get regionally they got nationally. In terms of produce and bakery goods and other food items, there was a huge diversity of suppliers in the United States because there was a huge diversity of stores. Whole Foods went in and bought out the bigger, more successful stores and then rebranded them and did centralized purchasing for produce, which now comes from Chile and New Zealand and places like that. In the process, many local organic producers went out of business. Massive scale and centralization of power and capital is the antithesis of what we had in mind when we started the natural and organic-food business in the U.S.
Grist: But does that totally discredit the positive things they are doing?
Hawken: Good deeds don't erase bad outcomes. But let's talk about the positive things they are doing.
Grist: Well, let's say they use recycled packaging and keep pesticides out of the soil. Isn't large-scale organic farming better than non-organic factory farms?
Hawken: Yes, but still it's large-scale agribusiness.
Grist: But they're better than Safeway.
Hawken: They are guided by profit. So are small companies. So far so good. But when a company gets large and dominant, the same instincts to survive and prosper can become unintentionally harmful. The natural-food movement is being bought up by Phillip Morris and H.J. Heinz and Jimmy Dean. That dog won't hunt. It leads to a lowering of standards, and emphasis on price as opposed to cost. It leads to uniformity, power, concentration, and control. Luckily, there's a slow food movement in the U.S. and lots of things happening that counter that.
Grist: And I guess what's more troubling is that Whole Foods can get away with it more easily than Safeway because everybody thinks of them as green. The branding is so powerful that nobody thinks to question it.
Hawken: To me the company that is exemplary is the New Seasons Market in Portland, Ore. They buy everything they can locally. These are real community food stores with wonderful food and fresh produce and fish. They know the purveyors, they talk about them. They really feed and enhance the local food web of Oregon and southern Washington and Northern California. They are to me your model of what a grocery store can do to help farmers and citizens and communities. And they're price-competitive. I asked them why they didn't come to the Bay area [where I live] and they said, "No! We're local!"
Grist: So how could we push this model nationally? Can we introduce federal-level incentives?
Hawken: Not really -- it's about culture and community. Anyone can do a New Seasons if they are in a community that wants it. And the people who started it -- they have the DNA, they understand what it means to be socially and culturally responsible.
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| OUR REVIEW OF THIS ARTICLE |
| REVIEWED BY: Rick Rohe |
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I was visiting a website called Cyber-Help for Organic Farms (http://www.certifiedorganic.bc.ca), looking over a chart called "Who Owns What", created by Phil Howard, Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The extent of conglomerate ownership of natural foods brands has quite an impact in this format--I was surprised. You'll see that over forty brands sold in natural foods stores are owned wholly or partially by corporate conglomerates such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Heinz, and Kellogg. Right under the chart is the excerpt from the Grist interview with Paul Hawken. I was particularly interested in his comments about Whole Foods--their Santa Rosa, California, store is where we buy most of what we eat. At another time, I'll add some criticisms of my own to Paul's; for my money (literal in this case), Whole Foods isn't nearly green enough. |
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