Sunday, April 16, 2006

Join the Whole Foods Renewable Recon Team!


From Shea, more great things going on at Whole Foods. As you know, earlier this year WF announced it would offset 100% of its energy use with renewable energy purchases from Renewable Choice Energy. Now, also in partnership with RCE, they're offering their customers the opportunity to do the same: starting tomorrow, Whole Foods customers who buy a year of wind power offsets will receive a $50 gift card. Apparently, RCE is sending out over a million brochures to Whole Foods stores, where employees will be handing them out to customers.

So, since its Earth Week, and because actively promoting such an offer could make a real difference in educating the public on how they can purchase renewable energy even if it's not available to them through their utility, I want to throw out a challenge to sustainablog readers, and also invite other blogs to follow suit. Let's take a page from our friends Al and Siel and the wildly successful Starbucks Challenge, and do some Whole Foods reconnaissance. Your mission as part of the Whole foods Renewable Recon Team (should you choose to accept it) is simple:
  1. Visit your local Whole Foods by Earth Day (next Saturday, the 22nd). If you're not sure if there's one nearby, you can search here.
  2. See if you're offered a brochure for this promotion.
  3. If you're not, ask for one.
  4. Finally, report back on your experience. If you're a blogger, please post your report on your own blog, and tag it with the del.icio.us tag "wholefoodsreconteam" (all one word, no quotation marks -- but you knew that). If you're not a blogger, feel free to leave a comment on this post.
  5. Keep an eye out here for updates.
While we're borrowing from the Starbucks Challenge in terms of tactics, there is a difference here: Al and Siel had good reason to believe that Starbucks wasn't living up to its Fair Trade pledges -- at this point, of course, we have no real reason to believe that Whole Foods won't keep up their end by handing out brochures to all customers. Still, let's gather information and share experiences -- one thing we've definitely learned from the Starbucks Challenge is that the message from the corporate office doesn't always make its way to individual stores.

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