We’re Getting Into the Publix Green Routine®

Sustainability is ingrained in our culture and represented in our mission statement through valuing our associates, serving our customers, enhancing our ties to the communities we serve, conserving natural resources and ensuring economic stewardship for our stockholders. As early as the 1970s, we began our recycling efforts by collecting all the cardboard used in our stores and working with paper companies to recycle.

Get Into a Green Routine®

Publix is in a Green Routine®! In 2001, we introduced our Get into a Green Routine® program to start making smarter decisions for energy, water conservation and recycling. We believe in meeting today’s demands without compromising what’s essential for tomorrow, and we appreciate our suppliers’ sustainability efforts as well.

To meet our goal as an industry leader, we started with simple changes and focused on the importance of being energy efficient through small efforts like turning off computers, lights and closing freezer and refrigerator doors. As we continued to talk about the importance of reducing electricity and energy use, we also encouraged our associates to implement these changes at home.

By the Numbers

Through Get Into a Green Routine® and other conservation projects like lighting and refrigeration improvements, our greenhouse gas emissions per square foot have decreased by 27.7% since 2007 and we’ve reduced electricity consumption in our retail operations by 20%, saving enough energy to power 199,436 homes for one year.

Social and Environmental Benefits

Each year, we strive to improve our recycling practices and make every effort to reduce our resource usage. Here’s what we’ve recycled.

2020 Recycled Materials:

• 298,801 tons of cardboard
• 12,594 tons of mixed plastic
• 2,692 tons of waxed cardboard
• 5,176 tons of mixed paper

This equates to saving:

• 2 million trees
• 1 billion gallons of water
• 1 million cubic yards of landfill space
• 3 million barrels of oil

LED Lighting

We continue to look for and invest in improved sustainable technologies, and we conduct energy audits regularly to ensure our stores operate at maximum efficiency. By testing the use of LED lighting in one of our newer stores, we discovered it saved electricity by 35%. We are now rolling out LED lighting to existing stores and incorporating it into new stores.

With the implementations of LED lighting and motion sensors on our refrigerated door cases in 944 of our stores, we’ve saved 100,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) annually per store so far. We’ve also replaced all our walk-in freezer lighting with LEDs. This results in a 50 — 80% reduction in energy usage over traditional incandescent lights.

Interested in learning more about our sustainability at Publix? We have a whole website dedicated to our efforts!