Chloe Crothers, Chloe Dymek

Making sustainable choices in grocery stores can be challenging for the average consumer. In the field of sustainability, “greenwashing” is used as a marketing practice to influence consumer choices. In reality, the sustainability characteristics of products are overblown and misrepresented. In an attempt to combat this lack of transparency, a sustainability scale is applied to different brands of the same products found in groceries stores. Ten variables were developed: land use, water use, water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, packaging, pesticides, waste disposal, certifications, worker treatment, and energy use. Scores rank the products on a sustainability scale from 0 (least sustainable) to 10 (most sustainable). The products chosen to demonstrate the scale are apples, milk, eggs, and bread. The hope is that by developing this sustainability scale for grocery products, it will be expanded to include more factors and subsequently widely-adopted. Furthermore, companies will turn to more sustainable production methods and less greenwashing as consumers use their buying power to demonstrate their dedication to sustainability.