Manomet’s Grocery Stewardship Certification Program Promotes Catrina Damrell to Field Manager

Manomet’s Grocery Stewardship Certification (GSC) program announced the promotion of Catrina Damrell to Field Manager. Damrell will be responsible for managing all activities that occur at GSC participant grocery stores from managing client relations and project delivery; delivering trainings; performing grocery store sustainability assessments and ensuring quality data reporting and analysis.

“The Grocery Stewardship Certification program has been steadily gaining momentum now that we have more than 500 stores enrolled,” says Peter Cooke, program manager for the GSC. “As the nation’s leading grocery sustainability program, we need to grow our staff base in order to keep up with demand.  Promoting Catrina, and recognizing her strong contribution to the development of the GSC, allows us to work with even more grocery retailers to help them increase their energy efficiency, engage employees, boost revenue and lower costs.”

Damrell joined Manomet in September 2014 and has since led and co-taught over 30 GSC trainings for grocery clients, assessed over 100 grocery stores, and analyzed the sustainability data for 400 grocery stores. Her prior experiences include working for an international carbon neutral certification program based in New Zealand and as a marine biology technician at Gulf of Maine Research Institute. Catrina is a U .S. Fulbright alumni, completing her grant as part of the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant program.  She is an honors graduate from Connecticut College with a B .A. in Environmental Studies.

Since launching in 2012, the GSC has worked with more than a dozen retailers in the United States and Canada. The GSC works with grocers to engage employees on operational sustainability strategies and to review store-level practices and equipment with an eye to increasing energy efficiency, boosting revenue and lowering costs.

While there are a number of programs that focus on high performance buildings, Manomet’s GSC program is the only certification program to expand into employee practices and procedures to engage all stores within a chain.  Participating retailers receive a comprehensive sustainability report detailing which operational procedures are already saving money; how much money and resources are being saved and future opportunities to maximize those savings.  Each report provides retails with the amount they are currently saving through operational sustainability – an average of $70,000 per store – and contains recommendations for approximately $20,000 per store of additional savings through operational sustainability.