As I’ve moved toward more sustainable food shopping, it has become painful to shop at Trader Joe’s, a privately held chain of grocery stores. The heavy packaging, in spite of all the cute branding with names like Trader Jose’s, Trader Giotto’s and Trader Jacques’s, is a turnoff. But news this week that the company wants to buy all of its seafood from “sustainable sources” by Dec. 31, 2012, reminded me what the chain does right.
The company has long been working to offer far more organic, local, sustainable options and forgo more wasteful choices. It has led the pack in many of its merchandising decisions, such as by offering a range of shampoos and soaps free of paraben and synthetic materials long before mainstream grocery stores began to stock them.
Years ago, when I first began looking for local and sustainable meat, I found that the Trader Joe’s near me in Portland, Ore., already carried Northwest-grown free-range whole chickens, switching between a few farms and sometimes offering soy-free and organic meats. And in the past several months, I’ve noticed from its packaging that Trader Joe’s organic milk comes from nearby farms, its artisan bread is also baked locally, and it’s offering a growing number of Northwest wines, complete with special little pink labels, as well as organic and biodynamic wine and beer options.
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