Doing Our Part

Ukrop's and Sustainability

Ukrop's is committed to conserving our resources and making our community a better place to live and work.

These are a few of the ways we're doing our part:

Supporting Local Agriculture

Since our first store opened in 1937, Ukrop's has sold produce from local farmers. When our customers buy local produce from our store, they're not only supporting the local economy, but they're cutting down on the use of extra energy and harmful emissions that are released into the atmosphere when produce is delivered from far away.

Ukrop's carries organic produce from the Appalachian Harvest Growers Network, which is a nonprofit that helps farmers grow and sell organic fruits and vegetables.

Wasting Fewer Bags

• Ukrop's sells regular and thermal reusable bags at consistent low prices to encourage our shoppers to use less paper and plastic. Next time you're in our store, look for our changing selection of seasonal bags.
• Every time shopper brings a fabric or paper bag back to the store to reuse with their purchase, we give them a 5-cent credit off their bill. We give more than 30,000 bag credits per week!
• Our paper bags are made from 100 percent recycled materials, with the exception of the handles.
• We collect plastic bags in bins at our stores. These bags are taken to Indiana where they're washing, chopped, melted into pellets and made into new plastic bags.

Preserving Our Water Systems

Food trimmings from our Central Kitchen are mixed with leaves to create Ukrop's Organic Compost. For every bag of compost and every bottle of Ukrop's Spring Water we sell, we donate money to the James River Association. Our composting has kept more than 16 million pounds of fruits and vegetables out of area landfills since 2002. In 2007, we donated more than $15,000 from water sales alone to help keep the river clean.

Using Alternative Energy

Ukrop's recycles the soy oil from our chicken fryers by processing it into biodiesel fuel for our fleet of trucks and refrigerated trailers.

Reducing Waste in our Stores

We reduce our usage of gas and electricity by using waste heat from our refrigeration systems to preheat hot water for cooking, supplement our store heat during the winter and dehumidify our stores in the summer.