With Memorial Day signaling the official start of the summer grilling season, its time to light up the grill and gather with friends and family. For many people, this means trying out some new (hopefully delicious) seafood recipes. But given that we care about where our food comes from and how it affects our shared planet, itd be nice to know where to buy some real sustainable seafood.
After all, nothing throws a wet blanket on a summer cookout faster than serving illegally-caught fish or unsustainably-sourced ocean plunder.
Wouldnt it be great if there was a guide that could steer us towards responsibly-sourced seafood?
Wait no more. Introducing Greenpeace’s 7th annual Carting Away the Oceans report! This grocery store ranking guide evaluates retailers based on four key performance criteria: the strength of their seafood policy, their dedication to sustainability initiatives for our oceans, their level of transparency in sourcing, and finally, the number of red list (think: bad) species that they sell to customers.
Unlike traditional seafood shopping guides that give you a species-by-species approach and tell you, the consumer, to navigate random grocery stores at your own risk, here at Greenpeace weve done the legwork for you by looking at grocery stores seafood offering as a whole. We are particularly pleased to see Trader Joes rapid improvement, especially since only recently the retailer was so far down in the rankings that we ran a Traitor Joes campaign.
While no grocery store is perfect, there are three that have eked out standards high enough to warrant inclusion in the good category, in a sea of fair to poor players. While it could be that your local fishmonger might be the best bet, when it comes to large-scale national chains, Whole Foods, Safeway, and Trader Joes round up this years top three.
Check out the seafood retailer ranking guide below to see where your local retailer ranks. Also, be sure to check out the full report for our detailed analysis of each of the twenty retailers surveyed, and to learn more on how you can help save our oceans.
