Green Team | Littleton Food Co-op

Green Team Picks!

April 16, 2025 By Anastasia Maher

In honor of Earth Day, Littleton Food Co-op’s Green Team is announcing their new shelf tags – look for them in the aisles to signify tried and true products loved by members of our Green Team. Will you find a new favorite natural deodorant packaged in *gasp* not plastic? Maybe! How about some eco-conscious laundry detergent you don’t have to work so hard to lug up some stairs? Take a peek in aisle 5 and your dreams just might come true. Did you know we have plant-based bacon that some of our vegan employees love?! Consider this a permission slip to go on a fun and earth-friendly scavenger hunt around the Co-op! What sustainable featured products will you find?

With whatever you discover, remember you’re not alone in your determination to choose more eco-conscious items for purchase! The Co-op is on a continuous and evolving mission to consider challenges of climate, energy, and ecology as decisions are made throughout the store. Happy Earth Day from the Littleton Food Co-op, and may your findings be both fun and sustainable. Look for these shelf tags throughout the store for Green Team’s picks all year ‘round!

Here are just some of the products the Green Team is loving right now:

Humble Deodorant

Humble Deodorant has plastic-free packaging and the brand has ingredient transparency.

MyBacon

This product is a plant-based (mushroom) bacon alternative- and approved by Co-op resident vegans!

Rebel Green Laundry Detergent Sheets

These laundry sheets have plastic-free packaging!

Thousand Hills Beef

Thousand Hills ensures their livestock spend their lives on grass-fed pastures (100% grass fed beef), support and utilize regenerative agriculture practices, and have a lot of educational info on their website.

Fetzer Wines

This winery is a Certified California Sustainable winery and a Certified B Corporation, which means the winery is committed to driving a global movement toward building a more inclusive, sustainable economy.

Earthwise Mesh Produce Bags

Their bags are reusable and on a mission to reduce the use of single-use plastics.

Fire Cider Recipe from Heartsong Farm Wellness

January 13, 2025 By Anastasia Maher

We were fortunate enough to host Grace Phillips of Heartsong Farm Wellness Center at the Littleton Co-op in January 2024 to lead a class on fire cider. Participants learned about typical fire cider ingredients and the benefits of this beloved tonic. While herbalist Rosemary Gladstar has the best known recipe for fire cider, it has truly evolved to be more of a concept than an exact recipe after years of adaptation in the herbalism and wellness communities. That being said, you can truly make this your own, so don’t fret about exact measurements or the need to substitute or omit an ingredient. After all, you’re the one who is going to be consuming it, so make it to your enjoyment.

Whatever ingredients you want to include in your fire cider, make sure to grab them here at the Littleton Co-op! We have the North Country’s best selection of local organic produce (often on sale!) to make your fire cider shine. Below is the recipe Grace shared during the Co-op’s fire cider making class:

Ingredients

 ½ gallon raw apple cider vinegar
 2 Onions (yellow preferred), chopped
 1 Lemon, zested and juiced
 2-3 Cayenne Peppers, chopped
 1 Fresh Ginger Root, grated
 1 Fresh Horseradish Root, grated
 2 bulbs Garlic, crushed or chopped
 Small jar of raw Honey

Equipment

 ½ gallon glass mason jar
 1 correct size lid (ideally the plastic ‘no spill’, but regular metal lid is fine)
 Cheese grater
 Paring Knife
 2 Cutting Boards
 4 small bowls
 Small and large spoons
 Parchment or wax paper
 Cheesecloth or strainer
 Paring Knife
 2 Cutting Boards
 4 small bowls
 Small and large spoons

Place your desired amounts (or all of each) of the onion, lemon zest, lemon juice, cayenne peppers, ginger, and horseradish into the canning jar. Cover with apple cider vinegar by two to four inches. If using a metal canning jar lid, place a piece of parchment or wax paper under the lid to prevent the vinegar from touching the metal. Shake well. Store in a dark, cool place for one month and shake daily during that time.

After one month, use a cheesecloth or strainer to separate the solid ingredients and any pulp from the liquid, pouring the vinegar liquid into a clean jar. Add honey to taste and balance out the fiery ingredients. 1/4 cup honey is a good place to start. Stir honey into vinegar until incorporated. Taste and continue adding honey until reaching desired sweetness level. The mixture should taste spicy, hot, and sweet (if desired).

Fire cider can keep for several months unrefrigerated and in a cool pantry, but it is best kept in the fridge. Use as a daily wellness tonic, or as a sauce for salads, vegetables, and grains. And if you don’t want to discard your strained out ingredients, check out this waste-reducing recipe for Fire Cider Chutney from our friends at Shelburne Farms. Enjoy!

Live a Low-Waste Lifestyle

July 6, 2023 By Littleton Food Co-op

Let’s have a friendly chat about something important: garbage. Yep, people create quite a lot of it, and sometimes we toss away things that could actually be repurposed or reused. Unfortunately, this kind of consumption isn’t doing any favors for our environment. Trash ends up in landfills, streams, airways, and even the ocean, polluting our planet.

One major culprit in our global waste stream is single-use plastic. Plastic-Free July is an international movement that encourages everyone to be more mindful of the plastics we discard daily. Despite the name, the idea here is not perfection but a concerted effort toward harm reduction. In some cases, we’re stuck with plastic for health and safety reasons, as accommodations due to disability, or because people don’t have equal access, opportunity, or resources to choose more sustainable options. That’s okay. The conversation is ongoing, and we urge everyone to push for better alternatives, educate themselves about how plastics are manufactured and recycled, and urge your community to develop more sustainable policies at the government level.

All of these issues can feel very overwhelming, so let’s start with some simple ways you can participate in a Plastic-Free July when you visit the Co-op:

Bring your own coffee cup

When you bring your own travel mug to the cafe, you can get a price break on coffee refills. We also carry colorful kleen kanteens if you need a new travel mug. And all our coffee and tea is from Equal Exchange, which is a fair trade cooperative!

Carry your silverware

Keep your silverware close at hand by simply wrapping it in a napkin and carrying it with you in your backpack, car, or purse. If you don’t want to misplace your spoons, check out our options from To-Go Ware, including travel kits and bamboo utensils. Easy peasy!

Buy in bulk

Pay a visit to our awesome bulk foods department, where you can choose exactly how much of an item you need. We’ve got handy paper bags, jars, and canisters for your convenience, or better yet, bring your own clean reusable container from home. At the Co-op, it’s a breeze—just weigh and fill!

Bring your reusable water bottle

Stay hydrated and help save the planet by bringing your trusty water bottle. We have a water station as well as sinks in the cafe, and guess what? Refilling your bottle is absolutely free! Hydration for the win!

Bring a bag, grab a box

Say goodbye to those pesky single-use plastic grocery bags – we haven’t had them here for years! Bring your own reusable bags, or if you prefer, feel free to use a recycled box from the Co-op. We also have stylish totes in all kinds of colors and designs. We’ve got options to suit your shopping style!

Skip the produce bags

Let’s skip those little bags for your fruits and veggies. Instead, bring your own cloth produce bags, or pick up a few extra from the co-op. We have tons of styles of small bags and wraps! Or simply let your produce roam free in your shopping cart – your veggies won’t mind!

If you’re curious about different earth-friendly initiatives happening behind the scenes at the Co-op, check out our website’s sustainability page. And don’t forget to learn more about Plastic Free July at plasticfreejuly.org. It’s a great resource to discover alternatives to single-use plastic and build lifelong habits that positively impact both the local and global environment. You can be part of the solution, too!

Symbols for Sustainability

May 24, 2023 By Littleton Food Co-op

We’d all like to make more earth-friendly choices when we’re shopping, but it can be confusing to discern what different labels mean. Here’s a handy guide to some sustainable symbols, brands, and certifications, so you can keep an eye out when you shop.

One Percent for the Planet is an international organization whose members contribute at least one percent of their annual revenue to environmental causes to protect the environment. The aim is to offer accountability, prevent greenwashing and certify reputable giving.

From fighting deforestation and climate change to building economic opportunities and better working conditions for rural people, the Rainforest Alliance is working to solve urgent environmental and social challenges.

The term “organic” refers to the way agricultural products are grown and processed. While the regulations vary from country to country, in the U.S., organic crops must be grown without the use of synthetic herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers, or bioengineered genes (GMOs).

Friend of the Sea has become the leading sustainable seafood certification standard for products and services that protect the marine environment. The certification awards sustainable practices in Fisheries, Aquaculture, Fishmeal and Omega 3 Fish Oil.

Tree Free Greetings has a 200-panel photovoltaic array that provides roughly 65,344-kilowatt hours per year of clean, renewable electricity. That’s enough electricity to power 10 average New England homes per year! Tree-Free’s on-site printing operation is 100% powered by the sun.

To become Climate Neutral Certified, a company must show that it is working to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from making and delivering its products and services – and compensates for all of them, every year.

No Mow May (and Beyond)

May 18, 2023 By Littleton Food Co-op

We have a lot of wonderful sustainability projects and practices happening here at the Co-op, including collecting food waste, recycling, reducing plastic usage, and more. But we’re not just focused on keeping trash out of the landfill and trying to reduce our carbon footprint, we’re also actively working towards adding biodiversity to our landscaping.

You’ve probably heard about No Mow May, which lets the flowering plants in our lawns have a chance to bloom a little longer and benefit local pollinators. We’ve set aside a section of our front slope facing Bethlehem Road for this purpose, and we’ll most likely keep it un-mowed through the summer, with perhaps a little trim here or there. Eventually, we hope to incorporate additional native plants and wildflowers into the space so it becomes a wild garden full of colors and textures that change with the seasons, as well as providing a habitat for local wildlife.

Here are some photos of the area, along with a close-up of some interesting plants that are popping up. So far we’ve spotted dandelion, yarrow, plantain, chickweed, sorrel, clover, trefoil, cinquefoil, and more. An interesting patchwork of colors and textures is emerging, where once it was a plain green slope. Keep your eyes on our lawn to see what else grows!