St. Patty’s Day is this Thursday, to get in the holiday spirit we are highlighting some of our green initiatives.
At Stewart’s Shops, we do our part to be more sustainable.
Our plant has over 2,400 individual solar panels on the roof which supplies 75% of the power to 50 of our locations. The energy created by the solar panels of the plant is equivalent to taking 80 cars off the road each year. We also use solar energy from two offsite locations in Halfmoon and Castle Creek.
Additionally, Our 10 Vermont shops use hydroelectricity to offset their energy usage.
We recycle a lot, over 6 tons of cardboard daily! That much weight is equivalent to one large elephant or about 2,000 half gallons of milk. That’s a lot of recycled cardboard. Each year we recycle over 4.5 million pounds of cardboard, office paper, plastic, metal, and light bulbs.
Much of what we use to ship our products to our shops is reusable. Our totes, dairy cases, ice cream baskets and bread trays are all reused during deliveries to reduce waste.
We encourage our customers to reuse too. At all Stewart’s Shops, customer get a discount on their coffee when they use any refillable mug. We offer reusable bags at all our shops for just 99¢. These bags are not only durable and stylish, but they are great for reducing waste. We also offer an insulated reusable bag so you can keep your pints and half gallons of ice cream cold!
Every Stewart’s Shop is equipped with LED lighting which is more energy efficient and have improved environmental performance and we provide plant-based straws to our customers.
Through our partnership with EVolve NY, we are committed to expanding our EV charging network. We plan to have more than 82 EV charging stations at 16 shops by the end of 2022. Currently we have five Tesla Super Chargers up and running in Ballston Spa, Chestertown, Clinton Corners, Hudson, and East Rutland with plans to expand the program by three more by the end of the year.