As consumers have increasingly turned toward grocery shopping in the last year to meet the bulk of their food needs, trends that already existed in the space have been accelerated. One of these key trends, eco-conscious grocery to appeal to sustainability-minded shoppers, has come up time and again, with grocery giants ranging from Ahold Delhaize to Walmart discussing their sustainability goals in recent earnings calls.
As these mega retailers add environmental initiatives to their existing retail strategies, other grocers have built their business models around these goals. Grocery subscription service Imperfect Foods, which began with the mission to sell “ugly” foods that would have otherwise gone to waste, has been especially well positioned in the last year to cater both to eco-conscious and COVID-conscious consumers, with its environmental goals and its contact-free delivery model. Now, the company has pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.
“Our entire business has been designed around eliminating food waste,” Madeline Rotman, head of sustainability at Imperfect Foods, told PYMNTS in a recent interview. “And as we take that mission inward, we keep asking ourselves, ‘What more can we do to build a better food system?’ … What that means is saying, OK, great, we’ve done amazing sourcing work and all this revolutionary work to change consumers’ hearts and minds about what food can look like … but it’s not enough.”
To commit to the company’s central sustainable goal “from harvest, all the way through the supply chain, to [the consumer’s] door,” Rotman explained, the company needs to make sure it is being as rigorous in its operations as it is in its food sourcing.
The First Steps — Cutting Back And Sequestering
The company’s most recent funding round brought in $110 million, a significant share of which came from investors with an express interest in helping the company achieve its sustainability goals.
“We’re really excited to have two impact investors who have really helped us believe in our mission,” said Rotman. “We’re going to use this money … to grow our business, but grow it in the right way.”
For instance, the company has partnered with climate consulting group Watershed, using the group’s software to measure its emissions and identify areas in which it is possible to reduce. This first step, measuring emissions, is key, as the core of any net-zero goal, Rotman explains, is, “We are going to reduce our emissions and then eliminate them through offsets.”
In addition to adopting renewable energy sources, Imperfect Foods intends to sequester carbon by planting trees, ensuring, Rotman said, that “how we plant the trees and where we plant the trees and how we … offset our carbon is actually sequestering it.”
The ‘Three Buckets’ Of Achieving Net-Zero
Rotman outlined the “three buckets” of the company’s approach to achieving the net-zero target by 2030. She explained, “It’s our waste elimination … it’s our renewable energy … but then also just the operational efficiencies.”
The first bucket, waste elimination, is in the company’s DNA. Though Imperfect Foods has expanded beyond the items specified in the company’s name, the perfectly good though unattractive produce often overlooked at grocery stores, it continues to look for foods that might otherwise get wasted — discontinued items, surplus foods, items that remain good after their supposed sell-by date, and “ends and pieces.”
As for the renewable energy, the company opened a facility in Los Angeles in 2020 powered by solar energy, and the company plans to power all of its facilities by renewable energy within six years.
The third bucket, operational efficiencies, includes strategies “to eliminate emissions in last-mile, as well as our upstream logistics.” To the former, Rotman specified that, by chunking deliveries by neighborhood, delivering to different areas on different days of the week, the company makes sure trucks pass location only once without doubling back, planning routes to be as direct as possible.
“In 2020, we actually had 12,800 tons of CO2 avoided,” said Rotman, “meaning that if each of our customers had gone to the grocery store themselves, 12,800 tons of CO2 would have been emitted. So we know that our batching of our customer orders together is actually avoiding carbon emissions.”
Inspiration From Other Industries
“I’m feeling extremely optimistic about … the rallying of all of the different businesses and different business sectors,” said Rotman, qualifying, “A lot of it is sort of a balance between what industry is leading and where regulation is enabling industries to lead.”
Rotman noted that the automotive industry’s turn toward electric vehicles and the clothing industry’s increased focus on recycling and reusing have served as positive models. She specified Patagonia as an inspiration, explaining that the outdoor apparel company focuses on reducing clothing waste in a way that has influenced Imperfect’s approach to food waste, an approach that includes informing customers as to how to reduce waste at home.
“I really think that Patagonia has done a good job of … changing the narrative,” Rotman said, “and that’s what we’re here to do as well.”
Turning the lens back on the grocery, Rotman said that she hopes other grocers will “follow suit,” eliminating waste, using clean energy, and improving operations. She noted that the agriculture industry makes up 24 percent of global greenhouse gases, adding that food waste contributes to a third of those emissions.
“So if we can eliminate food waste, we can drastically mitigate climate change,” said Rotman. “And that’s something that’s not just grocery, but the food system collectively. So that’s growing, transportation, logistics, restaurants, you know, the entire food industry. We can’t do this alone.”
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