Everyone’s talking about sustainability. Entire fleets of trucks have been converted to biodiesel; packaging has gone on a diet, losing mass and weight; and new technology is reigning in electric use in factories and stores.

A new report from Diamond Management & Technology Consultants provides some interesting insights on the phenomenon. For instance, it notes that companies need to be aware that going gung-ho implementing green programs could prove costly and have a negative impact on the company’s bottom line in the short term.

So, take smaller steps. The report suggests green initiatives start in areas that can benefit both business and environment. Not every one of them will have a positive return on investment. Therefore, it is essential “to think about all the green initiatives together as a balanced portfolio, with some initiatives being done on an investment basis,” the report states.

Traditionally, the companies that took up environmental initiatives were the big polluters. They did it purely to improve their corporate image and to correct any damage they caused. That’s not the case anymore. Now it’s cool to be green, and consumers are placing more and more importance on sustainability in making purchase decisions. It follows that, by adopting environmentally sustainable business practices now, companies will beat out their competitors for bragging rights and enjoy measurable financial benefits.

The long-term gains are innumerable, and some aren’t even realized yet because the movement is so new. But watch for it to grow, and quickly expand. Green supply chains are no longer exclusively about sustainability for its own sake, but also about internal efficiencies and cost containment. These are topics that catch any company’s attention.

PS — In case you’re wondering, the photo is a close-up of a spot cooling diffuser fan in the garden department at an environmentally friendly Wal-Mart store.

A few months back, we ran a story in our print magazine, SN Whole Health, about how supermarkets are selling more and more reusable bags. A couple of retailers sent us samples for the photo shoot, and after the issue printed I ended up taking home a dark red bag sent to us from Ukrop’s Super Markets in Virginia. “Sure, why not?” I thought at the time. I guess I felt obligated, since I usually try to do what I can to help the environment.

Well, the concept of kicking plastic started to grow on me, and now I use the canvas bag whenever I go to the supermarket. It’s even got a nice crease going right down the middle where I fold it and stick it in my work satchel every day.

It seems reusable bags are starting to grow on a lot of people. And supermarkets are doing a lot more than just increasing their stock — they’re aggressively marketing the bags and using them as a vehicle for eco-friendly positioning. Earlier this week, Tesco’s Fresh & Easy joined the list of retailers who plan to give away bags as part of their Earth Day activities. In addition to the standard canvas tote, Fresh & Easy also offers a $0.20 reusable “bag for life,” a 100% recyclable bag that the store will replace for free if damaged. Chalk one up for Target, too, who bundled their colorful red bags along with Vanity Fair’s latest “Green Issue.”

Offering free and reduced-price bags is a brilliant idea right now. Consumers and the industry, it seems, are starting to develop a less-is-more attitude toward eco friendliness. Just look at the increasing number of products being made with reduced packaging. State and local governments are also getting praised for imposing bans and taxes on plastic bags. Right now California is weighing a $0.25-per-bag fee, and Seattle’s mayor has said he wants something similar.

The only hiccup I’ve experienced in this whole process comes at the register, where most cashiers automatically start throwing my groceries into plastic bags. “Wait!” I often implore, trying not to seem too pushy. A lot of times they’ll look at me like I’m crazy, but I don’t mind.

We love to talk about a good opportunity when we see one. There are a lot out there, for sure, but one in particular strikes us as a confluence of several disparate trends right now, including gourmet, fair trade, and this whole local movement we’re pretty fond of.

Care to sample some single origin?

A number of coffee, tea and chocolate companies, which rely on ingredients from exotic, far-flung locales like Sumatra, Kenya and Indonesia, have profited from single sourcing for the past several years. Rather than blend ingredients from around the globe, as so many brands did and still do, they’re capitalizing on the gourmet angle of the business by dividing sourcing into single countries or regions. The resulting product also has an identity and a mission, namely to support foreign farmers.

Now single sourcing is moving into the mainstream, and companies are promoting not just the source of the product, but the terroir, or taste profile associated with the area. Green Mountain Coffee, for example, provides information about the different countries that grow their new line of single origin brews and their different taste characteristics. From African countries you get citrus notes, while Indonesian beans provide a more smooth, earthy flavor.

“One of the most interesting aspects of coffee is how the tastes vary from region to region,” says Susan Cote, wholesale marketing director for Green Mountain.

Indeed. Companies are also expanding into new categories. Frontier Natural Co-op, for one, just came out with a line of single origin vanilla beans.

Judging by the numbers, it’s no wonder manufacturers are jumping in. Sales of origin-specific coffees are up 17% over the past year, according to Information Resources. And fair trade goods (which fall right in line with single origin) are increasing more than 40% a year, data from global co-op Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International shows.

With the economy in the dumps, who couldn’t use a little Sumatra these days?

April is finally here, and I’m thinking ahead to sunshine, hiking and baseball season. As a business reporter covering whole health issues, I’m also thinking about Earth Day.

This year, it’s no wonder. Whole Foods announced back in January its plans to do away with plastic bags on April 22. Doing this gave them a lot of good press and put them ahead of other retailers on the issue — many of whom have crafted their own Earth Day promotions.

In terms of sheer size and focus, however, the award has to go to Wal-Mart. Yesterday the Bentonville retailer announced plans to offer a host of sustainable products at reduced prices for not just one day, but the entire month of April. Calling it their “Earth Month” promotion, Wal-Mart officials have positioned the campaign as a way to bring green into the mainstream, so to speak.

Part of the plan involves introducing new items like 20-pound bags of recyclable rubber mulch, $7.50 T-shirts made from recycled plastic bottles, as well as cotton T-shirts whose proceeds benefit transitioning organic farmers. It also involves cutting prices on items already in stores, like Clorox Green Works detergent, as well as introducing a new line of Sam’s Choice private label Fair Trade coffees.

It’s a pretty bold statement. Indeed, the promotions Whole Foods and Wal-Mart are offering show just how much progress sustainability issues have made on both ends of the retail spectrum. They’ll also, undoubtedly, guide other companies towards similar initiatives.

But why wait for one or the other to get ahead? Many mainstream grocers know their consumers and follow the trends. They should use this information to stick their necks out a little and provide something unique.

In our November SN Whole Health cover story, we reported on the growing demand for locally sourced products, and supermarkets’ efforts to meet that demand. Fast-forward a couple months, and the trend is as hot as ever. According to a recent study from The Hartman Group, 73% of consumers are buying products they see as locally made or produced.

Retailers like Price Chopper get the picture. This week the Schenectady, N.Y.-based chain announced it would start offering more local products throughout the store. Ukrop’s also gets it. Each year the Richmond, Va.-based chain partners with local groups like Appalachian Sustainable Development to provide fresh regional produce.

Supermarkets aren’t the only ones taking advantage. Chipotle is now serving pork from Polyface Farm (made famous by Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma) at its Charlottesville, Va. location. And food service operators like Sodexo and Bon Appetite are ramping up their local sourcing efforts at hospitals, college campuses and other places.

So how much bigger can this thing get? Well, before looking to the next horizon, retailers should first focus on marketing and sourcing the local offerings they already have.

Sourcing local products efficiently requires some creative thinking, since it runs counterintuitive to the centralized model that most supermarket supply chains adhere to. Smart companies will go out of their way to streamline the process and help give area farmers a hand.

There’s also the question of how to position these items once they reach the store. Supermarkets are currently the most shopped channel for the category, according to the Hartman study, claiming 62% of shoppers who buy local goods. That number could be higher, however, especially if more retailers take time to connect their customers with the people and stories behind the local products they supply.

“There’s an emotional connection that consumers make with local,” said Laurie Demeritt, president of the The Hartman Group. “They really want to connect with that narrative behind the product.”

An outdoor event, such as a farmer’s market or a meet-and-greet, is a perfect way to accomplish this. With warm weather just around the corner, now’s the time to get cracking.

Remember Max Headroom? If you’re a child of the 80’s like me, you certainly know the stuttering media character voiced by Matt Frewer. Or, maybe you were a fan of New Coke (Go ahead. After all these years, it’s OK to admit it). Max was the spokes-entity who continued hawking the reformulated beverage after a public outcry compelled the company to re-introduce Classic Coke. “C-C-C-Catch the wave!”

Indeed. Forgive the stroll down memory lane. It’s just that I was reminded of good old Max when Ahold-owned Peapod announced this week that it was introducing the “first ever virtual nutritionist,” capable of sifting through all the products sold by the online grocer and highlighting the ones that meet a customer’s dietary needs.

Subscribers can use one of five pre-set diet plans offered (gluten-free, peanut-free, high-fiber, low-fat and low-sodium) or they can create their own customized plan using a blank Nutrition Facts panel. Here they enter the maximum desired for calories, fat, carbohydrates, fat, etc. and then activate the filter prior to building their shopping list. Peapod will only display available products meeting that criteria.

The “NutriFilter” service also takes away the challenge of trying to determine how much to eat of any nutrient. The press release uses fiber as an example. Users click on the “fiber” icon while compiling their shopping list, and enter the amount of fiber they want products to contain, and the program will highlight the approved products.

The idea has merit because we all know just how difficult it’s become to decipher the various Nutrition Facts panels, on-pack claims and health logos clogging packages. Services like this allow users to shop without being experts; as long as they have some idea of their dietary needs, then they’re good candidates to take advantage of Peapod’s NutriFilter.

Nutrifilter is certainly not the wisecracking, surreal Max. But the ability of an artificial intelligence to help us navigate today’s world — whether politics or nutrition — is something I think he would have found worthy of comment.

Springtime: when the flora and fauna reemerge, the days grow longer, and Monsanto readies its latest genetically modified crop. This time around it’s sugar beets — “Roundup Ready” sugar beets, to be exact, engineered to withstand a key ingredient in the widely used herbicide (also made by Monsanto).

Among the critics of the new seeds — besides the Sierra Club and the Center for Food Safety — is a group called the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, which represents close to 300 faith-based investors and more than $100 billion in capital. The center has urged its members and the public to appeal directly to 63 major food companies, asking them to ban the use of the GMO beets in their products.

The ICCR’s message is simple: Don’t mess with God’s creation. And they’ve been preaching it consistently over a great many issues. The organization is one of the more surprising — and influential — demographics to join the environmental movement over the past several years. From Muslims to Evangelicals, religious groups of all cloths have used the good word and some of their considerable legislative heft to speak out against bottled water use, global warming (“What Would Jesus Drive?” was the name of one campaign), and numerous other eco-issues.

All this could prove to be a headache for Monsanto — but they’re veterans of this kind of opposition. Beets account for half of the nation’s sugar supply, so they’re certainly prepared to make a positive case for using the modified seeds.

More than anything, the ICCR and other religious groups demonstrate just how all-inclusive the wellness movement has become. All sorts of people have found that health and the environment fit with their values. It’s just that some are more divinely inspired than others.

We wanted to take some time to remind everyone about the Healthy Foods International Exposition and Conference, scheduled for June 18-19, 2008 in Dallas. Our print publication, Supermarket News, is a sponsor, along with another Penton Media division, New Hope Natural Media.

There’ll be regular updates on this page leading up to the show. Let’s start with the educational content. The cornerstone will be an exclusive, comprehensive study analyzing consumer buying habits, and the ways in which both manufacturers and food retailers can seek to meet the demands of wellness shoppers. These findings will be presented by the editors at Nutrition Business Journal during a three-part series of in-depth seminars during the show.

“This presentation will help you understand who the consumers of functional, organic and healthier-for-you-foods are, as well as attitudes concerning fresh and local products,” said Patrick Rea, NBJ’s publisher & editorial director. “The research will also detail how health, lifestyle and information sources play into purchasing decisions and more.”

Another highlight of the conference is the morning keynote session that details the conception and implementation of the Overall Nutritional Quality Index (ONQI), a single, unbiased reference point for every product and every category in the supermarket. The New Way to Shop for Health will be presented by ONQI’s developer, Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center and Jeff Posner of Topco Associates, the wholesale cooperative licensing the program.

Also on tap at Healthy Foods International are 10 educational breakout sessions that focus on the many challenges and opportunities in today’s wellness marketplace. Topics to be covered include kids nutrition, global retailing, ingredients, authenticity and credibility, healthy convenience, food safety, integration strategies and consumer attitudes.

Education offered at Healthy Foods International is free to all attendees and exhibitors. Best of all, qualified retailers, brokers, and distributors can register to attend the show for free before May 2, 2008; visit www.healthyfoodsintl.com/attend to register.

Manufacturers and retailers are really falling in love with the idea of nutrition guides. Everyone keeps coming out with their own versions. By the end of this year, consumers will be seeing a host of new programs in the aisles.

ConAgra Foods, unveiled its own initiative earlier this week, and is taking a slightly different approach to the issue. The manufacturer of such brands as Healthy Choice and Orville Redenbacher’s has devised a system based on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s MyPyramid dietary guidelines.

The program, approved by the USDA, tells consumers just how much each product contributes to fulfilling the recommendations set by MyPyramid. In an example provided by the company, a Healthy Choice Fiesta Chicken meal that contains chicken, rice, fruit and vegetables will have a graphic (at the bottom of the image shown) indicating the product provides 15% of the grains, 30% of the vegetables, 15% of the fruit, and 40% of the meat and beans that a consumer should eat based on a 2,000 calorie per day diet. The labels will appear on more than 700 ConAgra-made products beginning in May, and include only those that offer at least a certain threshold amount of important nutrients. It’s quite an initiative, and will be a cornerstone of the company’s Start Making Choices umbrella program.

Freedom of choice is part of the American Way; in this case, consumers looking to improve their diets can choose from a growing number of nutrition guides. ConAgra’s new icons are one way to eat better, provided shoppers purchase those brands. Othe manufacturers like Kraft and PepsiCo have their own symbols and criteria. Retailers this year will have the opportunity to implement one of two universal programs that claim to cover every product in every category.

Call it too much, call it confusing. Let’s just hope consumers get the message.

With enough commitment, creativity and technical know-how, a retailer’s website can open up new pathways to customer loyalty. Wegman’s has long understood this, populating its site with recipes, an impressive product database, a dietician’s blog, and more.

Now the Northeastern retailer has gone a step further by redesigning the site and adding several new features, including new recipes and an interactive shopping list tool that helps customers choose products and then track them down to the aisle level. On the wellness side, Wegman’s has added employee testimonials; store manager Joe, for example, writes about his journey to becoming a triathlete. There are also additional links and a clean new layout under the website’s “wellness” tab.

Far too many retailers do the bare minimum when it comes to developing their website. The slogans, logos and pictures are all there, and often presented in an attractive format. But consumers aren’t interested in learning about the company (no offense, retailers). They want what they can use, and wellness information is often just what they’re looking for.

There are limitations, however. People won’t go to a supermarket website to read the latest health news, or browse through an encyclopedia of medical terms. They’ll go there to find what they perceive as the supermarket’s area of expertise: food. That’s why smart online ideas include healthy and delicious recipes, dieting advice from in-store dieticians and nutrition facts about products.

Every consumer is asking the same question of the companies they find on the web: What can you do for me today? Wegman’s has provided answers, and so should other retailers.