Safeway, Whole Foods Top Seafood Sustainability List

WASHINGTON — Safeway and Whole Foods both have made it into the “green rating” at the top of Greenpeace’s seafood sustainability scorecard with a scores of 7.1 and 7, respectively.

The scores stood at the top of Greenpeace’s "2012 Carting Away the Oceans" report, which evaluates and ranks supermarkets on their sustainable seafood policies.

Greenpeace’s CATO report has evaluated supermarket sustainability since 2008, and up until this year no retailer had earned a green rating.

“Safeway and Whole Foods both have done a tremendous amount of work this past year to get into the green area [which means they attained a score of at least 7 out of 10 points],” senior markets campaigner Casson Trenor at Greenpeace U.S., told SN.

Safeway last year,was already at the top of Greenpeace’s 2011 scorecard with a higher score than any of the other supermarkets surveyed.

On the 2011 seafood sustainability scorecard, Safeway scored 6.5, and Whole Foods 6.2.

“When you get up to 6 on the scorecard, it really takes hard work to get to make it into the green area. They deserve a lot of credit,” Trenor said.

“Seven on a scale of 1 to 10 may not seem big in the world of math,  but it is big in this particular survey. When we first did this scoring in 2008, not one supermarket made a passing score.”

Of the 20 featured supermarkets on the 2012 scorecard, Harris Teeter, Aldi and Delhaize also showed significant movement toward sustainability. Publix and Winn-Dixie (now owned by Bi-Lo) continue to rank at the bottom, as they have in each year the CATO report has been released. 

“We're proud to be an industry leader in seafood sustainability and pleased that Greenpeace recognized our efforts in its comprehensive and thoughtful analysis of seafood sourcing practices," said Phil Gibson, group director of seafood at Safeway, in a press release. "We will continue to engage with our suppliers to proactively initiate progressive change that can become industrywide norms."