Whole Foods may have name recognition, but other Chicago food and drink purveyors have gained equal ground in efforts to be the “most eco-friendly.”

From Whole Foods to Jewel-Osco to Coca-Cola, businesses have listened and reacted to customer complaints and have now redoubled efforts to meet the growing demand for an eco-conscious and eco-accountable marketplace.

As is the case with all distributors of food and beverage products, Whole Foods, Jewel-Osco and Coca-Cola create large amounts of waste. This waste is often in the form of product and transportation packaging and secondarily in high energy consumption.

Their efforts to be eco-friendly are, in part, not only in response to their customer bases, but also a reaction to both their roles as waste creators and the recent tide of statistics on waste in America.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, each year more than 380 billion plastic bags, sacks, and wraps are consumed in the U.S. alone. Furthermore, 100 billion of those bags, or 332 bags per person annually, are consumed in the form of shopping bags. Commercial enterprises, then, account for the use of more than 280 billion plastic bags, sacks and wraps.

With so much waste generated, and in this instance, only plastic waste, businesses are finding ways to both cut back on consumption and offer alternatives to plastic.

“One of our main missions is to reduce our environmental impact,” said Deb Kwiatt, marketing specialist for Whole Foods in Wheaton.

In an effort to do this, Whole Foods offers 10 cents off every time one uses recyclable bags. It also offer recycling containers in the front of stores, and various reusable canvas shopping bags for purchase.

Helping to insure that Whole Foods’ “Green Mission” is a success, each store employs nearly a dozen workers in what it dubs the “Green Team.”

Likewise, Jewel-Osco also encourages customers to bring recyclable bags into its stores. Another option is to purchase its “Green Bag,” a hypoallergenic, water-repellent and reusable tote bag.

“All plastic bags collected are returned to our Melrose Park store support center, baled and sold to the Trex company, which is used to manufacture plastic lumber,” said Juanita Kocanda, Jewel-Osco manager of public affairs.

In 2007 alone, 1300 tons of plastic bags were recycled, in addition to 18,000 tons of total recyclable materials.

Yet while each company has made strides in offering plastic alternatives and recycling incentives, they both fall radically behind a San Francisco program started last year, an initiative heralded as setting the benchmark for eco-friendly food distributors.

In March, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors approved legislation outlawing plastic bags in large supermarkets, to be followed months later by a ban in large chain pharmacies as well. The ordinance was the first such law in any city in the U.S. The city had previously consumed more than 180 million plastic bags each year, using over 700,000 gallons of oil in the manufacturing process.

Similarly, in February of last year, Illinois sought to amend the state’s Environmental Protection Act with provisions requiring that retailers both limit plastic bag usage while offering recyclable, educational and collection incentives to do so.

The Plastic Bag Recycling Act, enacted on Jan. 1, 2008, while successful in forming an Illinois Plastic Bag Recycling Task Force, failed to implement a sweeping reform like that of San Francisco.

In addition to Whole Foods and Jewel-Osco, soft drink giant Coca-Cola also has changed its use of plastics, albeit not in plastic bags but in bottles.

In 2007 Coca-Cola introduced its redesigned DASANI bottle, a version using 30 percent less plastic than the original. Likewise, all other plastic bottles were reduced by 32 percent.

“Light weighting and bottle closure design efforts across all Coca-Cola products in PET (plastic) packages will save 100 million pounds of plastic this year in the U.S.,” said Kirsten Witt of Coca-Cola North America.

In addition to the redesign of its plastic bottles, Coca-Cola also has reduced materials waste from much of the remainder of its line.

“We have in fact reduced the weight of all of our packages,” Witt said, which includes “glass, plastic, and aluminum.”

Coca-Cola aluminum cans have been reduced by 33 percent. The Ultra Glass contour bottle, introduced in 2000, is 40 percent stronger, 20 percent lighter and 10 percent less expensive. In 2006 alone, its use eliminated nearly 89,000 metric tons of excess glass use, resulting in a CO2 reduction of more than 40,000 tons, or the equivalent of planting 13,000 acres of trees.

The Chicago area’s two Coca-Cola bottling centers, in Niles and on 47th Street and Western Avenue in the city, have undoubtedly witnessed a reduction in waste in response to Coca-Cola’s initiatives.

The next step for Coca-Cola is to educate the public on recycling its bottles, say experts.

According to the Earth Policy Institute, more than 1.5 million barrels of oil will be used in the production of the 25 billion plastic water bottles that America will buy this year—equivalent to fueling more than 100,000 cars for a year.

Recycling not only reduces the amount of oil used in their production, but would also ensure that an estimated 22 billion bottles, or 80 percent of the total, won’t end up in landfills.

Coca-Cola, as the producer of not only water bottles but plastic soft drink bottles, is poised to play a big role in eliminating excess waste and pollution in the future.

Undoubtedly, helping in the effort will be Whole Foods and Jewel-Osco as well. But while excess use of plastics remain a problem, both Whole Foods and Jewel-Osco operate in holistic fashion. Their missions are to reduce every eco-negative aspect of their operations. This includes reducing total waste outputs, limiting excess packaging and reducing energy consumption.

“At Whole Foods each individual is empowered to be green,” said Kwiatt. “We recycle all cardboard which is a huge thing for any grocery store. We’re using green construction methods. We’re switching our truck fleet to diesel.”

Whole Foods, as a result of measures like these, has earned the Green Power Partner of the Year Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency each of the last two years.

It also is being recognized for increasing its green power purchasing to include more than 509 million kilowatts-hours of wind-based renewable energy credits. This is enough renewable energy to cover 100 percent of Whole Food’s total electrical use, covering all its stores, headquarters, distribution centers and other facilities. This makes Whole Foods the only Fortune 500 company to offset 100 percent of its electrical use with renewable energy credits.

Like Whole Foods, Jewel-Osco also is active in promoting a green lifestyle. Through its Environmental Stewardship program, Jewel-Osco’s umbrella company Supervalu spent nearly $8.7 million on energy projects in 2007, saving nearly 74 million kilowatts of energy, an amount of energy equivalent to the annual electric consumption in 6,945 homes.

Both Whole Foods and Jewel Osco, while making their operations eco-friendly, also have interests in educating their communities on green lifestyles.

Under the Environmental Stewardship Program, Jewel-Osco participates in eco-friendly holiday activities and Earth Day projects. They also donate to the community in the areas of hunger relief, youth and education, and health and nutrition.

“(At Whole Foods) part of our philosophy is to do a lot of donation work in the communities around us, especially when it comes to green,” explained Kwiatt. This involves education programs, fundraisers and projects.