tilting at windmills for whole foods markets?

update at 11:30 ish (am) this just in: fortune magazine rates whole foods #15 on their top 100 places to work!

i've shopped at the new whole foods market in west hartford. i like it a great deal. wonderful produce, especially the exotic mushrooms i cannot afford (but i CAN afford the more mundane ones). their breads are good too. i just had a lovely rosemary loaf. their pastries look divine but i've not had any nor have i had any of their chocolates (made right there) . the staff has been helpful and friendly too. i put a great deal into customer service.

Whole Foods switching to all wind power in U.S.


Deal for wind power credits makes Whole Foods the biggest corporate user of wind power in the country.
By Renuka Rayasam AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Whole Foods Market Inc. is going all green on electricity.
The company is buying enough wind power credits to cover energy use at all of its U.S. stores, bakeries, distribution centers, regional offices and its Austin headquarters. The deal makes Whole Foods the biggest corporate user of wind power in the country.
Whole Foods will buy 458,000 megawatt-hours of the wind energy credits from Boulder, Colo.-based Renewable Choice Energy Inc. Neither company revealed the dollar value of the two-year contract.
"Right now, the main benefit is public relations," said Andrew Aulisi, senior associate at the nonprofit World Resources Institute. "For a company like Whole Foods, which has a particular kind of clientele, I can imagine this is an important way they relate to their customers."
Unlike slapping solar panels on a roof, buying green power credits does not mean that wind-generated electricity will power all Whole Foods' stores. Rather, the amount spent on the credits will pump more wind energy into the electric grid overall, reducing the amount of coal and natural gas used nationally.
"It's as if a city has been rendered green powered because of this (purchase) by Whole Foods," said Kurt Johnson,Green Power Partnership director at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency........