Greenwashing at Rite Aid

Today, I’m going to talk about greenwashing at Rite Aid. I’ve been working at the Rite Aid on East Bay street for the past year, so I have gotten to see their complete lack of any real environmental policies. To start, there is an commercial that plays every day on the speaker system advertising “how you can go green today at Rite Aid” and to ask a cashier for more details. The details in question is just the option to opt out of having your purchase bagged when you leave. That’s pretty much it. For a while, all of our name tags had these little extensions on them advertising going green at Rite Aid. This really irks me because it is not really an environmental initiative. It is just trying to capitalize off of a practice that people have been doing for ages. Next, I want to speak about how we do not really do much to help the environment. We basically do not have any form of recycling. All of the cardboard we use is broken down and thrown into a dumpster. Also, I understand the receipts are printed on a special type of paper that is not usually recyclable, but we waste a lot of that stuff. A receipt will always print out for a purchase regardless of whether or not the customer wants one. Then, we have to throw pounds upon pounds of this paper away everyday just for it to be locked in a landfill somewhere. I once joked with a coworker by putting the replacement printer paper in the trashcan because it was just going to end up there anyway. Finally, we do offer reusable bags at the store which is a plus, but the bags have been known to contain harmful materials in the past. I have tried to ask my managers to make attempts at recycling, but so far, it has been to no avail 🙁

4 thoughts on “Greenwashing at Rite Aid

  1. Its so upsetting that companies capitalize on the environmental movement when they are the opposite of “green”.

  2. Wow that is so frustrating! One thing you mentioned in your blog post stood out to me because I had never thought about it before, but it’s crazy to think that a receipt prints every time even if the customer doesn’t want one. Hopefully your managers will change their mind about recycling!

  3. Thank-you for sharing this behind-the-scenes, Dylan! Receipts drive me crazy; oftentimes there is too much white space. I think it`s great that you`re at least starting the conversations with your managers; hopefully, it will lead to change.

  4. Wow that is really a good example of greenwashing. I have seen Rite Aid promote going green but now that you mention it, they really do not seem to be doing much to actually go green. It would be nice for them to provide a free recycling station. The target in my hometown has recently put big recycling bins in the front of their store to encourage people to recycle. I think this is great because it makes recycling so much easier-just bring your recyclables to target with you!

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