Organic waste from ShopRite stores powers part of Connecticut town
Tip of the Iceberg podcast — Tom Cingari of Cingari Family ShopRite on produce trends, sustainable changes, modernization and digital impulse buys
The Cingari family business began with one man and a produce pushcart in the 1920s and has since grown to 12 Cingari Family ShopRite supermarkets across Connecticut, part of the Wakefern Food Corp.
And now they’re modernizing with environmental sustainability in mind — and they’re especially proud of how they’re transforming organic waste to power a large part of a nearby town. Tom Cingari, vice president of produce, floral and e-commerce, talks on the “Tip of the Iceberg” podcast about these changes, as well as produce trends and digital impulse buys.
“We've literally done everything from when you walk in the door, straight through,” Cingari said of the flagship Norwalk, Conn., store on the podcast interview. “We’ve gone really, really heavy on the perishable side of the business.”
The Norwalk store’s produce department has new refrigeration and wooden bin-style tables, many low to the ground: “So you can see over the entire department and see all of the color. And it just looks incredible, and it gets people excited about buying produce,” he said.
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The Cingaris converted all of the store’s refrigeration cases to high-efficiency refrigeration, including doored refrigeration. So, even though they added 10% to 15% more refrigeration to the store with the additions, they’re actually saving about 30% in energy.
Then there’s Blue Earth Compost’s Quantum Biopower program.
In the past, after pulling out what perishable food could go to food banks and pantries, the rest of it would go in the trash, besides some composting.
“There was never an outlet for some of that perishable waste, which, for me, is everything from produce,” he said.
The Quantum Biopower program repurposes all that organic waste — fresh produce, dairy, meat, bread — by processing it in an organic digester.
“It encapsulates all of the ethylene gas that would typically just go out into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas and turns that into energy. And they actually are able to send power to an entire part of one town in Southington, Conn., all using organic waste,” he said.
The waste becomes energy that is used to power government buildings and more in the town with a population of 43,800 people. All 12 stores are participating in this program.
This new program also means there’s less waste that the Cingari stores have to haul out, which means lower energy costs from trucks that have to haul dumpsters.
“There’s a long downstream effect of getting rid of some of that super heavy waste,” Cingari said.
Because this technology is relatively new, it’s not actually saving the stores money yet, but it balances out with the financial savings from no longer needing to haul out all that waste.
This supermarket practice of transforming organic waste into energy isn’t that common yet in the Northeast, while it is a bit more common on the West Coast, Cingari said.
“But it’s definitely a trend we’re seeing across the board,” he said.
