I recently became a Costco member after shopping there on a trial run with a friend. I know Costco isn’t considered the most sustainable place with its products being maximized in size and excessive packaging with many of those products. But they do have some products I was quite pleased with.
They have organic beef, organic frozen fruits, organic frozen vegetables, organic maple syrup. In fact they have quite a selection of organic and natural products for a budget friendly home. I chose to become a member because they have good deals on organic foods and organic foods are important to me. They also have good prices on other products that I often buy that are not organic, such as fruit leather, coconut oil and coconut water.
To be fully honest though, Costco isn’t necessarily a place that I would consider sustainable. Their stores are very large and probably use many resources (i.e. electricity). They also promote excessive servings since they only sell large size of products. This could possibly increase food waste, especially when it comes to the large size of fresh produce they sell. After a brief google session I found that Costco is actually working on installing solar panels to help with their energy demands. Which is surprising and necessary to help in their sustainability endeavours. Costco also apparently sells self installation solar panels for your home. This also use skylights to offset interior lighting, which I haven’t noticed before but I will look for next time. They also state that their metal buildings are better insulated than other building materials.
All in all, Costco is not the best place to shop because it is a big box store. It is similar to shopping at any other big boxed store (Target, Walmart, etc.). But for a single-income family that prefers to each organic and natural foods, Costco has budget friendly options. I know it may not be the best, but I also know I will continue to shop there for the foreseeable future.
