Dive Brief:
- Kroger says it will deploy a fleet of heavy-duty trucks that run on liquid natural gas (LNG) in the Pacific Northwest.
- The 40 vehicles will replace 40 diesel-fuel trucks and serve Kroger-owned Fred Meyer and QFC stores in Washington and Oregon.
- The nation's largest supermarket company said the trucks are the first step in a plan to transition the entire fleet to alternative fuels.
Dive Insight:
Paying attention to one's carbon footprint is becoming quite a thing in the food industry. Kroger isn't the only retailer moving to LNG trucks. In a separate agreement, Hispanic retailer Cardenas Markets signed a deal for 15 such vehicles with the same company supplying Kroger, Clean Energy Fuels Corp. Fresh and Easy went with LNG trucks a few years ago. Simply Supermarkets did so earlier this month too.
But as far as we know, the only food company to go so far in its carbon-reduction plans as to build a wind farm to power operations is Mars.