It’s not always easy being green, but it sure is worth it! Just like last year, Nugget Markets has been making a big push to reduce, reuse and recycle even more in 2016. Want to see how we’re doing so far? Check it out!

Water Reduction: In 2016 alone, Nugget Markets has already saved more than 10.5 million gallons of water—a 23.53% decrease over the total 12 million gallon decrease from 2015. To put that in perspective, Michael Phelps would have to fill up 16 Olympic-sized swimming pools to contain the amount of water we've saved in 2016 so far!

Waste Diversion: Since the beginning of the year, we’ve increased recycling by more than 750,000 pounds and reduced landfill waste by an additional 1,174,300 pounds compared to 2015. We’ve also increased donations of perishables from many of our stores by working with local food banks to upgrade to refrigerated transportation. Beyond that, we’ve increased our diversion of food scraps to California Safe Soils, Food to Energy programs and compost programs by 25% (an additional 416,000 pounds over 2015’s total)! In 2016, we will divert more than 70% of our waste out of landfills and to beneficial purposes. This is up from a 58.8% diversion rate in 2015, and on the track to even greater diversion rates in the future!

Energy Reduction: In 2016, we are starting to see the payoff from energy projects implemented in our stores over the last year. Stores are seeing energy savings between 3-15% over 2015, and thanks to new LED bulbs, night cooler curtains, closed door cases, awareness and communication over the last nine months, we have saved 715,000 kWh companywide. That's enough to power 71 homes in Sacramento for a year!

As a company all of our sustainability efforts are resulting in huge changes this year, and it wouldn’t be possible without our super sustainability coordinator, Jeremy Patin, our amazing green guru team and all our wonderful associates pitching in at store level. Thank you, team, for thinking green in 2016!