On Friday Sept 18, Greg Harper from CityTV visited London Drugs’ recycling partner, Genesis Recycling in Aldergrove, BC, to broadcast live segments for ‘Live Eye’ on the Breakfast Television and Lunch Television shows.
The crew filmed London Drugs recycling in action – from computer disassembly and secure hard drive recycling to our industry-leading styrofoam recycling program. Genesis President Bruce Shore and Maple Ridge, BC, London Drugs Manager Mike Cummings were on hand to answer questions and let people know what a difference London Drugs customers are making.
For instance, in the last 18 months, over 40 semi-truckloads of styrofoam have been recycled. Mike Cummings is pictured here, with a recycled polystyrene ‘puck’, showing how much the styrofoam waste is condensed for shipping. In total, London Drugs and Genesis partnership has diverted over a million pounds of waste from our landfills.
GreenDeal blog would like to officially thank Greg, Christan and the CityTV crew, and Bruce and Mike for getting up so early to help spread the word.
But we wouldn’t be successful without the London Drugs customers, choosing to shop where they can recycle their packaging, old laptops & appliances and taking the time to bring the stuff in. Way to go.
Keep on recyclin’!
September 21st, 2009
London Drugs Recycling on CityTV – Keep up the good work!
September 14th, 2009
The Green Geek Report – Your Green Deal Technology Update
Everything in the tech world moves at lightspeed, and green developments are no exception. So here are a few quick notes on some trends and products worth checking out.
More LED is good.
LED (Light Emitting Diode) technology is bringing amazing efficiency to lighting applications everywhere. Now its available in computer screens, like Apple’s new 24” LED Cinema Display, which means instant full-screen brightness and best of all, no mercury. Look for LED soon in notebooks and TV’s too.
Recycling is catching up.
At London Drugs we’re proud of our recycling programs for electronics, styrofoam, packaging, appliances and more. So we’re more than happy to see Provincial recycling and stewardship programs catching up. Programs such as ESABC (Electronics Stewardship Association of BC) are worth learning about. Spread the word and get everyone recycling.
Wireless means… well, less wire.
Every piece of wireless technology means one less plastic-sheathed copper cable. Over thousands of miles of networks and connections (even wireless mouse and keyboard applications) it could really make a difference. I’m still looking for real-world stats on this, but it stands to reason that the more prevalent this technology becomes, the more resources we could save.
Power supplies that use less power
If you use a UPS (uninterruptable power supply) to protect your computer from surges and outages, there’s a new player on the market that could reduce your energy use significantly.
The GreenPower UPS™ design claims to reduce power consumption by up to 75% compared to conventional UPS systems during normal operation mode, by bypassing the Automatic Voltage Regulation (AVR) and Transformer. This patented technology also dramatically reduces the waste heat generated.
Who knows, maybe geeks really will save the world.
September 3rd, 2009
Duncan Store #70 Opening showcases some bright ideas for green development.
On August 31st, I attended the opening of London Drugs’ latest store in Duncan. As usual, I was watching the proceedings with a green eye, and was pleased to see several examples of sustainable thinking.
To start with, this store is located in traditional Cowichan Tribes territory. So the evening began with a witnessing and blessing performed by elders and traditional dancers. The food was also catered by a First Nations facility, featuring numerous local delicacies. Local community involvement is an important component of the sustainability puzzle, and the respect and consideration shown here by the London Drugs team was impressive.
The store itself is constructed with a number of energy- and water-saving features. Chris Kidson, London Drugs Manager of Retail Store Development, took me through some of the highlights:
- Sky Windows allow for natural light to be used whenever available.
- Lighting is T-8 standard, a smaller fluorescent tube which uses less energy. The tubes themselves are Alto certified low-mercury lamps from Phillips, on a ballast system, allowing them to dim when full power is not required.
- Lighting reflectors maximize dispersal of light from the tubes, and are manufactured locally in Maple Ridge, BC.
- All water fixtures and toilets are low-flow models.
- A sophisticated building management system allows for remote monitoring and maximizing of energy efficiency
- Flooring uses BioBased Tiles from Armstrong Floors, a LEED-rated product
- Low-VOC paints and adhesives are used throughout
- PhotoLab features a new ‘Dry Photofinishing’ system which releases no liquid effluent
Although the green message was not the main focus of the evening, the What’s the Green Deal product signage was in place in all departments, and London Drugs’ Green Deal program was highlighted in the podium address by President and CEO Wynne Powell. It’s always reassuring to hear those priorities coming from the top.
One thing was clear – the community in Duncan had been asking for a London Drugs for some time. Here’s hoping green shoppers in the Cowichan Valley spread the word about a new local option for some of their sustainable living needs, and keep pushing to make London Drugs greener than ever.
August 31st, 2009
Want to print greener? London Drugs has paper from The Greenest Mill in the United States – Gray’s Harbor.
If you’re looking for a 100% post-consumer recycled paper for your home or office, follow the ‘What’s the Green Deal‘ signs to Gray’s Harbor 100. When you learn more about the company behind this paper, you may not want to buy anything else.
The green journey of Gray’s Harbor Paper really began in 1993, when local investors bought back the paper mill in Hoquiam Washington, in order to keep it from being permanently shut down. Led by third-generation local resident Bill Quigg and his family, they realized going ‘green’ was more than a feel-good plan. It was a survival strategy.
In order to cut their power costs, Quigg and his team converted their boilers to use wood waste (bio-mass) to power their operation without buying fuel oil or natural gas. Wood releases CO2 as it naturally biodegrades, so this power source is considered ‘carbon-neutral’ and allows Gray’s Harbor to sell additional fossil-fuel-free power to Puget Sound Energy.
On the people side of the ledger, this mill is equally progressive. A union-run company, Gray’s Harbor has created an employee-integrated culture, where self-directed teams of workers vote on work schedules, set quality standards and keep the plant running at full capacity with limited supervisory positions.
But back to the paper – Harbor 100 is a bright white, premium quality recycled sheet made completely from post-consumer waste pulp. That means no new trees were cut down to manufacture it. According to the Gray’s Harbor website, each ton of Harbor 100 paper that is used, compared to a ton of ‘virgin forested paper’, saves:
- 10,052 gallons of water
- 14 Million BTU’s of energy
- 1120 pounds of solid waste
- 2210 pounds of greenhouse gasses
- and over 3 tons of trees.
For our GreenDeal.ca blog readers in BC, Gray’s Harbor’s location just south of the border means less carbon emissions from shipping as well.
So until the paperless office becomes a reality, get the greenest paper you can. You’ll be supporting more than just the forests.
If you’d like to learn more about the Gray’s Harbor story, you can connect to an excellent blog post on ‘What They Think – Going Green’.
For a virtual tour of the Gray’s Harbor Mill, click here.
August 8th, 2009
Don’t get stuck with the Styrofoam! London Drugs offers industry’s first Styrofoam take-back recycling program.
Your beautiful new flat-screen TV is all set up and the big game is about to start. You just need to get rid of the pyramid of Styrofoam packing blocks in the middle of your living room. But how? You can’t put them in the blue box because the municipality doesn’t recycle polystyrene. If you somehow manage to cram them into your garbage can, you’ll have nowhere to store the rest of the week’s trash. You even contemplate stashing them in your trunk for a midnight dumpster run, like some subversive suburban Pulp-Fiction character. Then you smile, remembering that you bought your flat-screen at London Drugs and all you have to do is bring your Styrofoam back to the store to be recycled responsibly.
Right now, London Drugs is the only major retailer taking back Styrofoam for recycling, along with any other packaging that comes with purchases at their stores. In fact, in the last 18 months, they have prevented over 40 semi-truck loads of Styrofoam – some 50,000 lbs – from entering landfills. That’s no small task.
Expanded polystyrene, as Styrofoam is officially known, is a great packing material. It’s light, inexpensive and durable. But because it takes up so much space with so little weight, and takes thousands of years to break down, it is a challenge to landfills and recyclers alike. At a recent visit to Genesis Recycling, one of London Drugs’ responsible recycling partners, I learned more about the challenges of recycling Styrofoam, and the successes of the London Drugs program.
Styrofoam returned by customers is picked up at London Drugs stores and collected at the warehouse before shipping to Genesis. There, the Styrofoam blocks are ground up and compressed into polystyrene blocks, each about 1/40th the size of their original form. This makes them a commodity that is then shipped and sold to be remanufactured into new products. At this stage, though, Styrofoam recycling is certainly no money-maker.
“In its expanded form, polystyrene is very inefficient to ship.” Says London Drugs VP Clint Mahlman. “One whole semi-truckload only weighs about 1.5 tonnes. So it is very labour intensive to collect and ship for recycling. But we’re committed to making this program work, both for our customers’ convenience and the capacity of our landfills.”
So next time you’re thinking about purchasing appliances or electronics, remember London Drugs. And don’t get stuck with the Styrofoam.
July 29th, 2009
GreenDeal 101 – Making sense of Green Certifications
GreenDeal 101 is our series of blog articles written specifically to help newcomers to the Green scene understand some of the terminology and issues in the world of sustainability.
If you browse the green aisles, you may easily be confused by the variety of seals, certifications, programs, emblems and crests that adorn products. These often feature globes, trees, leaves, water droplets and all manner of other folksy earth-like graphics, and usually make claims such as ‘earth-friendly’, ‘100% Organic’ or ‘Approved by Such-and-Such Organization’.
So how do you sift through this certifiable confusion without becoming certifiable yourself?
I always recommend that people do their own online research, but not everyone has the time or web-searching patience to take on that task. So here are a few thoughts and comments on two types of certifications.
Corporate Eco-Labels
Many companies decide to create their own certifications or programs internally. These vary widely in their scope and believability. Some go as far as offering written commitments and products with strong eco-benefits. With HP’s Eco Highlights Program, for instance, they are pledging a 25% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from their operations by 2010, and featuring their HP Deskjet D2545 Printer which is made of 83 percent recycled plastic. Not bad.
Other manufacturers’ green labels may be less specific. The claim of ‘Natural Ingredients’ for example, is not really a viable indicator of green benefits. And some green labels say so little, they appear to simply be greenwash (regular products dressing themselves up in eco clothing). Boooo.
Recognized Third Party Certifications
These represent a higher standard of green labeling, where a company or product must meet certain criteria to qualify. These third parties may be governments or organizations that are independent of influence from industry, and with these labels you can usually be sure some product testing or qualification has taken place. Requirements and processes are also usually quite transparent.
Below are some of the third-party certifications we look for when reviewing products for What’s The Green Deal. If you see these labels on products, you can be pretty sure they are believably greener in some way or another:
General:
Canada Environmental Choice EcoLogo
Organic:
USDA Organic
British Columbia Certified Organic
Oregon Tilth Certified Organic
California Certified Organic Farmers
Soil Association
OCPP / ProCert
Quality Assurance International
Fair Trade:
TransFair
QMI
Paper and Wood Products:
FSC – Forest Stewardship Council
So when you see green labeling, be critical. Read the ingredients and do your own online research when you can. Because when it comes down to it, we each need to decide what’s green for ourselves.
For more research on certifications, check out ecolabelling.org – here you can browse over 200 eco-labels from around the world.
July 11th, 2009
What’s behind the green screen at KINeSYS Performance Sunscreen?
As part of my research for What’s the Green Deal, I’m often asked to dig deeper into the green claims of certain products. It’s a rare pleasure when the in-depth story on a company reveals an even greener picture. Such was the case when I interviewed Rob Takeuchi, spokesman for KINeSYS sunscreen.
On their web site, KINeSYS describes a few key eco-friendly advantages under a banner they call ‘EarthKind™’. These include:
- Bottles that are 100% recyclable
- Cardboard used in packaging is 40% post-consumer recycled
- KINeSYS is carbon-neutral, (more on this later)
- They are part of the Social Venture Network
- They are a signer of the Compact for Safe Cosmetics
This is pretty good, but the story gets even better.
Let’s start with the bottles. Not only can you drop them right in the recycling box, they are actually manufactured right here in BC. (Almost unheard-of in this era of global outsourcing) The labels and cardboard shipping cartons are also manufactured locally and printed with vegetable-based inks, while the non-pressurized sprayer units (specially designed to handle the small sunscreen molecules) are made in the US, sourced through a Canadian firm. This localized supply-chain means way less carbon emissions from shipping, better support for our regional economy, improved green transparency and greater quality control.
KINeSYS purchases energy for its warehouse and head office through Bullfrog Power, a Canadian firm that adds electricity from wind generation and low-impact hydro to the grid for every kWh purchased by its customers. Last Earth Day, KINeSYS also went the extra step to purchase carbon offsets for employees’ personal vehicles, (through Offsetters, a local Vancouver company) and now claims to be the only carbon-neutral sunscreen company in the world.
So does the stuff work? KINeSYS started selling sunscreen in 1994 to performance athletes at the Commonwealth Games in Victoria. Their website features testimonials from doctors and sun-sensitive individuals, and they adhere strictly to the standards set out by Health Canada. This is important to note, says Rob, as some retailers are importing ‘natural’ sunscreen products that do not have a Canadian DIN (Drug Identification Number). “Sunscreen is a drug product. If you see sunscreens without a DIN number, they may not have been tested to Canadian standards.” Says Takeuchi. “The other big implications of not submitting products for review is that they could contain ingredients not properly disclosed … or not deemed appropriate (for reasons of safety or efficacy) by Health Canada. And that’s not safe, when you’re dealing with protecting your skin from the sun.”
This all may sound like quite a lot of green effort, but apparently, it’s still not enough.
“London Drugs has always supported our efforts to reduce packaging and be more green at the retail level, so we’re very happy to be part of What’s the Green Deal. But at KINeSYS we’ll always be trying to do better. For instance, right now we’re looking at finding a more eco-friendly tape for our cartons.”
A small thing? Perhaps. But it shows their green cred is more than skin-deep.
July 7th, 2009
Keep those green bags clean.
We know reusable shopping bags are a good idea, but like anything non-disposable, they’ll need a little maintenance from time to time. A recent study funded by the plastics industry (no doubt trying to pump up sales as stores and customers try to use fewer plastic bags) found that more than half the reusable shopping bags they tested were contaminated with some form of bacteria.
But in a recent Vancouver Sun article, B.C. provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall said reusable bags do not pose a serious public health risk. “…it’s just about the importance of hygiene, and the same basic principles that apply to cutting boards and separating raw foods from cooked foods.” Kendall should know, having come from England where reusable shopping containers are common: “I grew up with reusable shopping bags, everybody used them well into the ’60s, or wicker baskets,” he continues, “People laundered their bags periodically.”
So here are a few tips for keeping your shopping trips as clean as they are green:
- If your bag is fabric, toss it in the washing machine, and if it’s a plastic material, let it soak in a basin filled with soapy water and either the juice of half a lemon or about a quarter cup of vinegar. Make sure to dry the bags thoroughly.
- Use specific bags for meat or fish and wash these every time they are used.
- Don’t keep your shopping bags stuffed into a tight space or in an unhygienic area (such as loose in the trunk of a car) Store them somewhere clean and well-ventilated.
- Don’t use the same bags for buying broccoli as you do for taking your sweaty workout gear home from the gym.
- Replace your reusable bags when they get to be too old. (Check to see if they are recyclable, like the ones offered by London Drugs)
By offering reusable bags and educating customers, London Drugs has been able to reduce plastic bag use throughout all our stores. With the right bag maintenance, we can clean up even more.
June 27th, 2009
GreenDeal 101: Greenwashing
GreenDeal 101 is our series of blog articles written specifically to help newcomers to the Green scene understand some of the terminology and issues in the world of sustainability.
No, greenwashing is not doing your dishes with an eco-friendly liquid.
Greenwashing is the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service. This is especially relevant, as new ‘green’ products seem to appear almost daily. Furthermore, the issues of what defines ‘green’, and what we can do about it are constantly developing. So how do we identify what’s green and what’s greenwashing?
One of the best definitions I’ve encountered comes from environmental marketing agency TerraChoice. It’s actually a list of definitions they call the ‘7 Sins of Greenwashing’: (reprinted with permission)
1. Sin of the Hidden Trade-off – Suggesting a product is ‘green’ based on an unreasonably narrow set of attributes. (Or one small one)
2. Sin of No Proof – An environmental claim that cannot be substantiated by easily accessible supporting information or a third-party certification.
3. Sin of Vagueness – Claims that are so poorly defined or broad that their real meaning is likely to be misunderstood by the consumer. For instance, ‘All natural’ isn’t necessarily ‘green’.
4. Sin of Irrelevance – An environmental claim that may be truthful but is unimportant or unhelpful for consumers seeking environmentally preferable products. ‘CFC-free’ is a common example, since it is a frequent claim despite
the fact that CFCs are banned by law.
5. Sin of Lesser of Two Evils – Claims that may be true within the product category but that risk distracting the consumer from the greater environmental impacts of the category (eg, organic cigarettes)
6. Sin of Fibbing, (fortunately, the least frequent sin) – Environmental claims
that are simply false.
7. Sin of Worshipping False Labels – The imitation of third-party certification with fake labels or false claims of third-party endorsement.
All in all, they create a pretty stringent list of checkpoints for green marketing claims, so don’t be discouraged if some of your favourite brands fall short on a few points. Just use them as a guide to judge for yourself what greenwashing means. Then provide feedback to the companies and products you think need it and be part of changing green marketing for the better. London Drugs carries a LOT of products, and the team behind What’s the Green Deal does its best to analyze and report green product claims fairly. But if you discover a product you think is greenwashing, please let them know. The more we all do to let manufacturers know we want as much transparency as possible, the greener things will get.
June 23rd, 2009
Want to destroy data? You have to destroy the drive. (Bet the Pentagon wishes they recycled their computers here)
London Drugs has always been extremely careful with data-carrying electronics brought for recycling, developing an industry-leading process to make sure data is destroyed. Too bad the military minds at The Pentagon didn’t hear about it. During the making of a PBS documentary on e-waste disposal, UBC students were able to source old hard drives that still contained secret information from the US Department of Homeland Security.
And it’s not just military security that’s at risk. Thieves also plunder old hard drives for credit card and identity information they can use on everyday folks like us.
Erasing a drive is not always enough to completely remove data. The only way to be sure is to physically destroy it. That’s why London Drugs has been so focused on data security with their e-waste recycling program. When you bring a data-carrying device for recycling, London Drugs technicians record the serial number, physically damage the drive right there at the store and lock it up. Then, when it goes to their recycling partner, (like Genesis Recycling in BC), the drives are unloaded, disassembled and mechanically shredded, under the watchful eye of a Loss Prevention Officer. All electronics and appliances are also disassembled and separated into marketable materials right at the plant. This ensures your e-waste is not just shipped to third-world countries for scrapping, where toxins and heavy metals are creating a whole new environmental hazard.
So if you want to be sure your e-waste is being recycled right, bring it to London Drugs. Just try to get there before the Pentagon finds out about it.
