Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

renewable energy

Just Salad Partners With Arcadia to Offer Renewable Energy Deals, Free Salad

Always a trailblazer when it comes to sustainability, fast-casual chain Just Salad has unveiled yet another way to motivate consumers towards more eco-conscious choices: reward them with free food when they power their homes with clean energy.

The company has teamed up with clean energy startup Arcadia. Per an announcement from the two sent out today, Just Salad customers that sign up for an Arcadia subscription by the end of this month will receive a $50 credit to Just Salad. 

Arcadia stands out in the clean energy space because the company makes it possible for pretty much anyone to connect to renewable energy. By partnering with wind and solar farms around the U.S., Arcadia can source, verify, purchase, and retire renewable energy certificates (RECs) for energy consumers use at home — whether they own the house or rent an apartment. Purchasing RECs, which is essentially what Arcadia customers are doing when they connect their utility bills to the service, means contributing to the overall availability of green power across the country.

Arcadia operates across all 50 U.S. states, though availability varies within each state and isn’t everywhere.

Through the new deal, customers with a Just Salad account can sign up for an Arcadia subscription. Upon paying their power bill through the Arcadia platform, users will earn their Just Salad credit, which will be available digitally via the restaurant chain’s app. In some states, like “most of” New York and Illinois, the $5/month Arcadia membership fee can be waived. 

And while free salad is always a plus, the more important point of the Arcadia deal is that it potentially exposes more consumers to clean energy options they may previously not have known about. Just Salad’s geographic reach has grown substantially in recent years to include various states from New York to Illinois and down south to Florida and North Carolina. Arcadia operates in all of those places currently.

Encouraging and incentivizing customers to adopt more eco-friendly lives is something Just Salad’s been doing ever since it introduced its reusable bowl program, which offers customers deals and free toppings for bringing their Reusable Just Salad bowls to the store.

Arcadia, meanwhile, has partnered with food companies before, most notably in its deal with Freight Farms, struck last year, that allows CEA growers to connect their farms to cleaner sources of energy.

Walmart Sets Goal of Zero Emissions by 2040

There are multiple layers of good news in Walmart’s announcement today that it’s targeting zero emissions across all of its operations by the year 2040.

First, on its face, it’s good news when the world’s largest retailer decides to do something beneficial for the planet (though one could argue the actual the “good” here doesn’t balance out the company’s main business of selling us more stuff). According to today’s press announcement, Walmart says it will:

  • Convert to 100 percent renewable energy by 2035 through a mix of wind, solar and other energy sources
  • Electrify and zero out emissions from all of its vehicles including long-haul trucks by 2040
  • Shift to “low-impact” refrigerants for cooling and electrify the climate control of its stores, clubs, warehouses and data centers by 2040

As part of today’s announcement, Walmart also said that it will “manage or restore at least 50 million acres of land and one million square miles of ocean by 2030.” The company also pledged to drive the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices and management of sustainable fisheries.

This is not the first eco-initiative from Walmart, a company that has a complex history of “greening,” as this paper published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review back in 2008 points out. But Walmart’s current renewable efforts are coming at a time when the company is possibly changing its relationship with consumers. The pandemic has spurred people towards new heights of online shopping, and Walmart recently launched its Walmart+ subscription service, which offers free same-day delivery of groceries as a perk.

Online commerce and increased need for delivery changes how Walmart will move goods around. Instead of just going from distribution centers to stores, it will be driving more goods around directly to people’s doors across the country. More deliveries means more trucks on the roads (or drones in the sky), more often, which means that actually, that electrified vehicle fleet should probably come sooner than 2040.

But the year 2040 is actually the other layer of good news from Walmart’s announcement. At least the company thinks there will still be a planet to sell goods on by then.

KFC Parent Company Ramps Up Sustainability Plans for China, Introduces Reusable Baskets

Yum China this week became the first restaurant company in mainland China to receive the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) label for converting its used cooking oil into sustainable biodiesel.

According to a press release, the company launched a pilot of its cooking oil project in 2018 in Chengdu, where all Yum China-owned KFC locations in the city converted their used cooking oil to biodiesel. For the project, Yum worked with biodiesel plants, oil storage sites, and waste collection companies.

For many quick-service restaurants, cooking oils are essential for business; they’re used for frying, grilling, and numerous other cooking tasks around the kitchen. In recent years, restaurants have shifted away from oils packed with trans fats to so-called “healthier” options like sunflower and soybean oil.

But even these healthier oils take their toll on the environment (and your insides, but that’s a story for another day). The EPA notes that cooking oils, whether from vegetable or animal sources, can “cause devastating effects” on the environment: they can suffocate plants and aquatic animals, clog up shorelines, catch fire, and destroy wildlife.

China is one of the world’s largest producers of waste oil, which is a huge environmental risk (to say nothing of the country’s gutter oil problem), but also a huge opportunity if more companies commit to helping turn it into sustainable fuel.

Yum China operates all mainland China locations of Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut, and owns the Little Sheep, East Dawning, and COFFii & JOY brands. Factoring in all these restaurants, that’s more than 8,600 restaurants across the country. In other words, there’s a lot of cooking oil to be recycled, and a company of Yum’s status could help set a standard for other restaurants across the country.

Recycled oil isn’t the only sustainability initiative Yum China has been up to of late. In the same press release, the company announced it had introduced reusable baskets to over 6,000 KFC locations across China.

The introduction of reusable baskets is in keeping with KFC plans here in the U.S., which include the chain converting to 100 percent renewable plastics by 2025. According to the press release, the move is expected to save more than 2,000 tons of paper per year and cut down the total amount of waste in Yum restaurants by 20 percent on average.

China, meanwhile, is turning itself into a hotbed of activity for foodtech solutions. VC firm Bits x Bites just launched an incubator in Shanghai that partners startups with major CPGs like Danone and Coca-Cola. Waste reductions, be it oils, plastics, or other materials, will no doubt play a role in some of those partnerships moving forward.

Starbucks Will Power More Than 300 Texas Stores With Solar

Starbucks made another move towards investing in green energy today when it announced a partnership with solar company Cypress Creek Renewables. In a post on the coffee giant’s Stories site, Starbucks noted that the two companies, along with U.S. bank, are “teaming up on a portfolio of farms across Texas.” The partnership includes two solar farms that will power 360 Starbucks stores across Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, and Arlington.

The post also noted that Starbucks is investing in six other Cypress-owned solar farms in Texas, and predicts that the eight total farms will reduce the company’s total carbon footprint by 101,000 tons annually.

The Seattle-based coffee retailer isn’t new to solar initiatives. In April 2017, Starbucks invested in NC-47, solar farm in North Carolina to power around 600 Starbucks locations in that state as well as Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C. In September of 2018, Starbucks announced its Greener Stores initiative, which, among other things, aims to power all stores with 100 percent renewable energy by 2025. That includes solar as well as wind — in November of 2018, the company invested in an Illinois wind farm to power almost 350 of its locations.

Starbucks isn’t alone, either, in its plans to ramp up the sustainable side of business, for which the year 2025 is shaping up to be the key date for big-name quick-service brands. Wendy’s has its Squarely Sustainable program, which so far has included using more energy-efficient kitchen equipment and HVAC systems. The company also plans to reduce its overall energy usage by 20 percent by 2025. KFC will convert its packaging to renewable plastic sources, also by 2025. Meanwhile, McDonald’s has said it will source 100 percent of its packaging from renewable materials by, yep, 2025, and Dunkin’ has said it will do away with polystyrene cups by next year.

What will become clearer in future is which of these areas will help quick-service chains make the most positive impact on sustainability. From the perspective of a consumer, it’s easier to see that impact in compostable coffee cups and cutlery as replacements for polystyrene and plastic. Renewables are trickier in that they are a) harder for customers to “see” and b) have a long way to go in meeting long-term climate and sustainability goals. However, that doesn’t make them any less important, and as we inch towards 2025, we’ll see more of these initiatives from more chains, both in the U.S. and globally.