The Red, White, and Green

Los Angeles natural foods market Erewhon hosted its 30th year anniversary celebration this past Sunday, featuring 100 exhibitors and lecturers — even drawing eco-celeb Ed Begley Jr. as its keynote speaker. I didn’t make it to the event, unfortunately. However, I did see the postcards that were littered all over my neighborhood in order to publicize the event, and that are still lingering days later (don’t worry, I picked them up and put them in the recycling bin after taking these photographs).

Seeing as a flyer was placed on my windshield no less than three times this past weekend (my husband’s car as well), I’m guessing that Erewhon printed and distributed thousands of them for the event (and I’m no Dwight Schrute, but the cards didn’t even look like they were printed on recycled paper).  There are plenty of eco-friendly ways to promote an event  – radio advertisements, posts on popular local websites like DailyCandy and LA.com – even a strategically placed poster or two wouldn’t have created the mess and the waste that these flyers did, not to mention the inconvenience for locals, who had to pick up all the litter. For any company, this kind of pollution is unnecessary; for Erewhon, “a model store in the natural foods industry” (their words, not mine), it’s downright embarrassing.

–Jennifer Grayson

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