Sustainability is a year-round habit, but Earth Day on April 22 is the day the region makes a point of it. It has been marked since 1970, and the message is the small one: daily choices add up. You can plant a pollinator-friendly native garden, compost, recycle, or plant a tree.
The other half of it is where your money goes. Big-box stores are convenient, and they carry the environmental cost that comes with that convenience: high-carbon supply chains, heavy packaging, and energy-hungry buildings. Chain restaurants carry a version of the same problem, with single-use packaging and a heavy reliance on conventional meat and dairy. So here is where I would send someone who wants to spend closer to home.
SHOPS THAT SELL YOU LESS PACKAGING
These four are built around using less, not buying more.
- Ecojoyous, Old Sacramento. A shop aiming to cut single-use plastic by reducing, reusing, and recycling. There is a refillery program for essentials like shampoo and detergent, plus bamboo cutlery, reusable totes, and locally made gifts.
- Community Mercantile, Davis. Its aim is to reduce consumer culture, and waste along with it. Gently used home goods such as furniture, bedding, and pet supplies, a library of things where you can check out tools like a library book, and classes on topics like upcycling.
- Rutherford Reserve, Auburn. A low-waste refillery model in downtown Auburn where you buy the amount you need. Products are non-toxic and all-natural, from lotion and air freshener to biodegradable cleaners and dishwasher powder, plus compressed reusable towels and dryer balls.
- Midnight Kin, Placerville. Natural, handmade goods: ceramics, linens, wooden toys, and all-natural body products, alongside sustainable essentials like wooden toothbrushes, reusable paper towels, and reusable straws.
RESTAURANTS THAT ALREADY RUN THIS WAY
Mulvaney’s B&L, Midtown Sacramento. Farm-to-fork before that was a phrase on a menu. Locally produced ingredients from farms that use sustainable practices, every part of the animal used, everything recycled, biodegradable to-go cutlery made from sugarcane, and composting serious enough that the kitchen runs more than 99 percent landfill-free. Excess food goes to homeless services, and the menu changes daily with what is in season.
The Hive, Woodland. A honey- and bee-themed restaurant and event space in a zero-net energy building: solar power, efficient heating and cooling, and high-efficiency appliances. Outside is a 2-acre pollinator garden run 100 percent organic, with no pesticides or herbicides. You can sample local honey and mead, or eat a meal built from local, seasonal ingredients.
Curiosity Café, Sacramento. Zero-carbon and all-electric, inside the SMUD Museum of Science and Curiosity near Old Sacramento, built to show what sustainable dining can look like. Electric cooking equipment, locally sourced ingredients, and rice bowls, sandwiches, wraps, and salads, with vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options.
Almighty Bistro, El Dorado Hills. A neighborhood eatery with an eco-friendly menu: pasture-raised, sustainably harvested proteins and locally sourced produce, no GMO products, and everything gluten- and wheat-free. The food has an island influence, with poke bowls, loco moco, and tropical tacos. Full bar, and a non-alcoholic menu with mocktails.
The Healthy Habit, Auburn. Organic produce and meats free of hormones, nitrates, and antibiotics, with minimally processed food and no industrial supply chain behind it. Sandwiches, salads, and açai bowls, many of them vegan or vegetarian.
CO-OPS AND NATURAL FOOD STORES
If you want to do most of your grocery shopping this way, the region has the options. Natural food stores here tend to carry organic and non-GMO produce, minimally processed foods, pasture-raised meats, and sustainable seafood, plus specialty items for vegan and gluten-free diets. Some carry supplements, bath and beauty products, and home goods, and a few have a cafe inside.
Food co-ops work the same way with one difference: they are owned and operated by members or employees rather than outside investors.
- Davis Food Co-op, Davis
- Placerville Food Co-op, Placerville
- Briar Patch Food Co-op, Auburn and Grass Valley
- Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, Midtown Sacramento
Natural food stores include Nugget Markets at various locations, Elliott’s Natural Foods in Sacramento, and Sunrise Natural Foods in Roseville and Auburn.
THE COMPARISON I REACH FOR, AND WHERE IT STOPS WORKING
The comparison I use is cooking from a farm box instead of ordering dinner. You plan, you use what you have, and you waste less. The result is better and it takes more of your week.
Then it stops working, because a farm box still arrives at your door. Shopping this way does not. The refillery means bringing your own containers. The used-goods shop means buying what happens to be on the shelf that day. It is more stops, not fewer.
WHAT IT ACTUALLY COSTS YOU
I would not pretend this is free or effortless. It is neither.
- Money. Small local production usually costs more than the big-box version of the same thing.
- Time. One run to a supermarket can become three stops at three shops.
- Planning. Refill shops work when you remember your containers. Forgetting them is a wasted trip.
- Selection. You buy what is in season and in stock, not whatever you wanted that day.
- Convenience is real. The big-box store is one stop, late, and open. That is the thing you are trading away.
Two pages for later: the neighborhoods hub if a shop on this list made you curious about the area around it, and the mortgage rates page if you are working out what you can afford before you start looking.
Question for you: which would be harder for you to give up, the extra stop or the extra cost? That usually decides whether this habit survives past April.
Adapted from Eat & Shop Sustainably This Earth Day, originally published by Windermere Signature Properties at windermerecalocal.com.
WHEN YOU ARE READY
Let’s talk about what you want in an area.
Send me the areas you are considering and what matters most to you. I will tell you what each one is actually like, including the parts that argue against it. Nothing is committed by asking.