Greetings pilgrims! I seem to have run into Rip Van Winkle and fell asleep for quite awhile, so it’s about time I provide an update.

Did you know that the chef-prepared foods we make and don’t sell are donated? In Lane County, rescued foods go to FOOD for Lane County, a private, nonprofit food bank, whose goal is to eliminate hunger by creating access to food. Market of Choice donate thousands of pounds of food to this program every year.

I would like to pass on some hard numbers, provided to us by FOOD for Lane County, so that you’ll have a better understanding of what this contribution amounts to in our community.

From Jan. 1 through July 30, 2011, our Eugene stores donated 31,530 pounds of bread, 17,755, pounds of deli items, 40,927 pounds of dairy, 28,234 pounds of produce, 16,444 pounds of sweets, and 16,662 pounds of non-perishables, for a grand total of 152,864 pounds.

A program of FOOD for Lane County, the Food Rescue Express program recovers food from grocery stores, hospitals, schools and restaurants that has been prepared but not served. This “rescued” food is repackaged into family-sized portions by volunteers in FOOD for Lane County’s commercial kitchen. The food is then distributed to families in need through food pantries, shelters and meal sites. This food adds nutrition and variety to emergency food boxes, preventing good food from entering landfills.

It takes a concerted effort from many Market of Choice employees to cull and collate these items, so that they can be picked up in a timely and orderly manner. It's a great partnership.

In addition, our Corvallis donates approximately 5,000 pounds of food per month to Linn Benton Food Share. Donated food includes products that are close to code date but still perfectly fit for human consumption, such as dairy, produce, baked goods and groceries, as well as gourmet prepared foods that would otherwise go to waste.

Market of Choice is one of six Corvallis-area grocers that contribute to Food Share in this way. Food Share then distributes the food to emergency food pantries, soup kitchens, child and senior centers, shelters and gleaning groups. More than 37 percent of those receiving emergency food assistance through Food Share are children.

I applaud those who contribute time, money, effort and products to help the many families and individuals who need these services in our communities. You can play a role by donating through the Scan-A-Coupon program.

The act of giving is a reward in and of itself. And we’re happy to do our part.

I have some exciting year-end numbers to share. These are full-year numbers from all facets of our in-store compost/recycling/trash programs at our flagship store, located at 29th & Willamette in Eugene.

The first big number is the 2010 compost total. We accounted for a whooping 200 tons of food waste that was composted, rather then sent to the landfill. This was accomplished with the help of our composting partner, Rexius. This composted material eventually finds its way to local gardens.

Add to that 200 tons of compost:

• 96 tons of mixed recyclables

• 250 tons of cardboard

• 186 tons of glass

• 4 tons plastic wrap

• 4 tons plastic

• 10 tons aluminum

That’s a grand total of 750 tons of recycled or composted materials saved from the landfill in 2010!

In comparison, the amount of trash taken to the landfill was a diminutive 186 tons, 564 tons less than what was recycled or composted. Yee ha!

This means that approximately 80 percent of our total store waste was recycled or composted last year – not bad! And I’m optimistic that we can do even better this year.

Thanks to everyone – our employees, customers, recycling and composting partners – for all your hard work and dedication to our Eco Efforts programs.

I look forward to greener days ahead!

I hope everyone is having a safe and enjoyable summer. Please play safe and remember to recycle when you’re out and about. Niceties aside, I would like to focus on glass. Glass is a highly used recyclable. It can be used over and over again. Why? It takes less energy to melt and mold recycled glass, rather than starting with raw materials, like silica.

Our Willamette store recycles an amazing 7,650 pounds of mixed glass per week. Multiply that by 52 weeks and that weight increases to a stupendous 397,800 pounds or 198,000 tons per year. And where does OUR recycled glass go? Well, I’m glad you asked.

Oregon Beverage Recycling Co-operative (OBRC) collects our glass twice weekly. It is transported to their facilities in Portland, where the glass is further crushed until it reaches a uniform size of about a half dollar.

This mix is then color sorted into brown, clear and green. All the glass collected from the Portland, Eugene, Medford and Pendleton areas then goes to the Owen Brockway plant in Portland. There, it is re-made into beer bottles.

And just in case you were wondering, all the glass collected from the Bend area is transported by rail to Gallo Glass in Modesto, California to be made into – you guessed it, wine bottles.

Just as the planet Earth can survive only by recycling its air and water (over and over and over for billions of years), so can humanity survive by following nature’s examples. With only a few hundred years under our modern construction and consumption belts, we need to educate by example. Remember to remember. You get the picture.

Did you know … Cardboard bales make up the largest slice of our recycling pie? Our 29th and Willamette Market generates 250,000 tons of cardboard annually. The accumulation is consistent and follows a well-beaten path.

Every product that enters our store comes in a box. Our hard-working grocery crew breaks down all of the boxes, and then carts them to our receiving area where we have a large, steel baler that’s built like a tank. Two or three times a day the baler compresses 750 lb bales that are safely stored until they are picked up.

Twice weekly, Unified Grocers trucks them to their Portland warehouse, where they are stored in “area 24” (kinda spooky sounding, right?).

When enough bales are accumulated, they are placed on a trailer pallet two high, side by side, and transported by Cascade Express to Farwest Fibers in another part of Portland.

Farwest Fibers, one of the larger mixed recycling companies in the Northwest, then re-bales the cardboard and ships it to companies, such as Weyerhaeuser, where cardboard is reconstituted into more boxes, divider sheets, paper, etc.

Such is the life of cardboard; to be constantly reshaped and reused over and over again utill it becomes the perfect container!