In a landmark move, 29 Albertson’s stores were recently added to the region’s Green Works roll as Distinguished Businesses in the Green. Included on that list are the five stores located in Kitsap County.

According to Vicki Bushnell, Kitsap’s Green Works Coordinator, recycling is big business to large firms. “The Albertson’s chain, like many large companies, takes waste prevention seriously from a financial standpoint. By backhauling corrugated cardboard to their Portland Distribution Center, each store saves money on disposal costs and is credited for the revenue generated by the cardboard.”

The Kitsap Albertson’s stores recycled 885 tons of cardboard. Corporately, the company recycled enough cardboard to fill 12.8 million shopping carts, according to Albertson’s Resource Conservation Manager, John Bernardo, who coordinates the company’s waste prevention efforts from Boise, Idaho.

It was Bernardo who first contacted Green works. Since early spring, technicians from both King and Kitsap Counties have performed waste consultations at all 29 stores. What they found, says Bushnell, was that recycling was just the tip of the waste prevention iceberg.

Albertson’s recycles the common commodities most grocery stores do including meat bone scrap and cooking grease (which is rendered for tallow), plastic grocery bags, end pallet/case wrap.

Where the chain excels, notes Bushnell, is in “thinking outside the box” — a term used often when referring to Albertson’s outstanding efforts to develop a multi-purpose, recyclable produce box. The stronger, more attractive box is filled at the farm, used for transport and then becomes the display box at the store. According to Bernardo, that means fewer people are handling the produce, fewer boxes become waste, and the number of old waxed produce boxes that couldn’t be recycled is reduced.

The 29 stores are part of the corporate affiliation with America Recycles Day, the national celebration of recycling and buying recycled-content products. Locally, each Albertson’s store marked products made with recycled content with a special America Recycles Day tag to help customers identify them.

Any business in Kitsap County is elegible for the program. For more information contact Bushnell at (360) 337-4678, (800) 825-4940 or vbushnell@co.kitsap.wa.us.