Website: Carting Away the Oceans

This report from Greenpeace ranks and rates 20 supermarket chains, including 17 national chains, on their sustainability practices for purchasing seafood and communicating about sustainable seafood to shoppers.

From the introduction:

This updated Carting Away the Oceans retailer scorecard reveals that while many U.S. supermarket chains continue to work on improving the sustainability of their seafood sales and sourcing policies, others have yet to take meaningful action.

When Carting Away the Oceans was first released in June 2008, twenty of the largest retailers in North America found their general seafood practices exposed to public scrutiny for the first time. The original purpose of this project was to inform retailers of the impacts their seafood sales are having on marine life. We also sought to use public awareness and objective science to reward retailers that were willing to incorporate the principles of sustainable business into their seafood operations.

As we look back at the first year of Carting Away the Oceans, we can see a pronounced schism among the retailers that were targeted by this report. While more than half of the companies have demonstrated at least some degree of progress, there remain nine retailers that have made no visible effort whatsoever to increase the sustainability of their seafood operations. These industry laggards continue to wreak havoc on our environment, with no apparent regard for the health of our ecosystems or the values of their customers.

At this point, Greenpeace has little choice but to call out these gross offenders for who they are, and to strongly urge all consumers to avoid buying seafood from the following retailers: Aldi, Costco, Giant Eagle, H. E. B., Meijer, Price Chopper, Publix, Trader Joe’s, and Winn-Dixie.

These companies have demonstrated a willful disregard for our oceans and for the growing demand among US consumers for sustainable fish and honest fish merchants. In spite of the good faith attempts of Greenpeace and other environmental and consumer groups, these retailers have failed to address the serious environmental issues that have been brought to their attention, and have failed to respond to the urgency of the situation at hand.

In contrast, the broader public is calling for an end to the era of corporate greed at the expense of the environment and future generations. Nowhere is the demand for this paradigm shift better demonstrated than by the actions of these retailers’ competitors. Greenpeace is delighted to announce that several of the companies included in this report have not only shown great improvement, but continue to move toward being the first large-scale “green” seafood retailers in the United States. Interestingly, each store has found avenues within its unique business model to move toward a more sustainable way of sourcing and selling seafood. Examples of this kind of innovation are evident in the actions of retailers like Wegmans, Ahold, Whole Foods, and Target, each of which has made great strides in various areas. While Whole Foods has increased its level of cooperation and initiative participation, Wegmans has developed a strong sustainable seafood policy, and Target has worked diligently to eliminate many unsustainable items from its inventory.

As Carting Away the Oceans moves forward, it is Greenpeace’s goal to continue to promote and reward progress among these seafood retailers. Additionally, as we enter our second year of this work, it has become clear that some retailers simply do not respond to positive reinforcement and invitations to cooperate. Greenpeace is now prepared to begin disseminating honest information about the atrocious practices of these retailers to the general public, in the hope that this will convince these key companies to incorporate more sustainable practices into their seafood departments.