(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Campaign Pushes Local Food & Safe Products at Dollar General [1]

['Sara Imperiale Margaret Brown']

Date: 2023-10

On May 31, 2023, a delegation from the Campaign for Healthier Solutions once again attended the Dollar General annual shareholder meeting in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. As shareholders, we urged the corporation to phase out toxic chemicals from its consumer products and move forward with sourcing nutritious, locally grown food to protect the health of its customers, workers, and the communities where Dollar General operates.

Dollar General’s practices have an immense impact on communities across the country, especially communities of color and low-income communities where discount retail chains are often the only place to shop for food and other essential goods. As of February 2023, Dollar General has more than 19,000 stores. The company operates more retail stores than any other company in the United States, and more than 75 percent of people in this country live within five miles of a Dollar General.

Across the country, many Black, Latina(o), and Indigenous communities and low-income neighborhoods experience insufficient access to affordable, healthy, and culturally relevant foods. In 2021, nearly 34 million people in the United States lived in food insecure households, meaning that financial constraints made them uncertain of having or unable to acquire enough food to meet the nutritional needs of everyone in the household.

The connection between food insecurity and dollar stores is clear. Many chains operate intentionally in food-deprived areas, like communities of color, rural communities, and low-income communities. Nearly half of dollar store sales come from customers who rely on public assistance programs and the sale of food at dollar stores is growing rapidly, particularly in low-income and rural communities. From 2008 to 2020, dollar stores increased their share of retail food purchases by nearly 90 percent, and by more than 100 percent in rural areas. Unfortunately, most of the food available at these discount retail chains is highly processed with low nutritional quality and creates additional health concerns because of toxic chemicals in food packaging.

Community-Designed Solutions for Affordable, Local Food

The Campaign for Healthier Solutions, a project of the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform and Coming Clean to push for safe, nontoxic products in the country’s largest dollar store chains, has long recognized the outsized role that discount retailers play in providing essentials for low-income communities across the United States. These corporations have the power to determine the source, quality, and type of products available to those communities, and as a result, can make choices to support health, equity, and well-being.

The Local Food Solutions project follows years of advocacy by the Campaign for Healthier Solutions to remove toxic products from stores, especially items made for children. These efforts align directly with the Louisville Charter for Safer Chemicals, a nearly twenty-year process to achieve principled alignment on a policy platform that is endorsed by more than 120 organizations representing environmental justice and grassroots communities, environmental and health nonprofits, and leaders in the medical, public health, business, and science communities.

Since 2019, the Local Food Solutions project has been asking Dollar General to offer healthy, local food options in its stores, starting with four stores in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The South Valley of Albuquerque is the base of operations for the Agri-Cultura Network, a community-based and farmer-led cooperative that works to provide access to local and sustainably grown produce and spur local economic development. Agri-Cultura Network and its network of more than 70 farms and ranches use traditional and innovative agricultural practices to improve environmental and community stewardship and strengthen the agrarian and cultural heritage of their land and its residents.

Local Food Solutions is offering a path forward for Dollar General to provide highly desirable, local food to its customers, and in doing so, reinvest in the communities where its stores operate.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.nrdc.org/bio/sara-imperiale/campaign-pushes-local-food-safe-products-dollar-general

Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/