spud! Small Potatoes Urban Delivery

spud! and Ethics in Action

We are excited to report that Small Potatoes Urban Delivery (SPUD) received an Ethics in Action Award at the 9th Annual British Columbia Ethics in Action Awards Dinner on October 23, 2002. The award recognized SPUD for overall environmental and social leadership in the Small to Medium Sized business category.

About the Awards (from the sponsors)
"The Ethics in Actions Awards celebrate small and medium size to large businesses in British Columbia who are leading the way in corporate social responsibility. Their actions and decisions have a positive impact on our communities by emphasizing accountability and promoting social and environmental bottom lines as well as traditional financial considerations"

For more information about the awards, click here (go to www.ethicsinaction.com)

To read an article published in Business in Vancouver about why spud! won this award, click here.

Big Impact from spud!

Organic food delivery not only supports healthy eating but reduces greenhouse gas emissions

by Glen Korstrom

Small Potatoes Urban Delivery Inc. (SPUD) president David Van Seters credits his own "naivete" as the motivating factor to stake out new ground and start an organic food delivery business in March 1998. Almost five years later, the vigorous spud! has swallowed nine other organic food delivery companies, including Organics To You, Evergreen Organics, Organic Planet and Urban Organics. Van Seters' firm has grown from four employees to 65 and now delivers organic food to approximately 4,000 clients. Charting that successful, sustainable and community-conscious road has earned it a 2002 Ethics In Action award for overall leadership in the small or medium-sized business category.

spud! delivers locally grown pesticide-free foods to consumers. Van Seters estimates that each delivery-run by one of his 10 trucks eliminates an average of 90 car trips that his customers would otherwise have made. Four of his trucks use alternative fuels to further reduce damaging fossil fuel emissions created from vehicle exhaust.

Van Seters believes the world would have far less greenhouse gas and chemical pollution if everyone ate food produced nearby. SPUD's locally grown products travel an average of 760 km, Van Seters said, accounting for far less fossil fuel than the shipping of conventional products to grocery stores.

SPUD's support for B.C.'s organic farmers has yielded tangible results. When spud! launched in 1998, farmers only provided organic B.C. carrots for 26 weeks each year. In 2001, spud! could buy those carrots for 48 weeks, Van Seters said, to indicate how his store has helped cultivate that market.

Van Seters' business model is designed to generate less waste than conventional food sellers, he said.

Because spud! delivers products to consumers who have placed specific orders, Van Seters knows exactly how much product he needs. Conventional grocery stores can only guess at how many customers they will get or how many carrots those customers will want to buy, he said.

The occasional bit of food that spud! wastes is promptly composted.

spud! delivers its fruit and vegetables loose in Rubbermaid bins so no bags are wasted. And those reusable bins have yet to wear out, Van Seters said.

To reduce water use, spud! recently installed a new bin-washing device that requires 80 per cent less water than the former system, partly by recycling used or "gray" water. The water is heated enough to sanitize the bins without any cleaning solutions.

All these environmentally sensitive measures combine to enable spud! to claim exceptional stewardship. But the Ethics In Action award for leadership involves community care and social initiatives as well. Van Seters said his company meets that requirement by donating 10 per cent of its pre-tax profits to community and environmental initiatives.

For example, spud! has donated nearly $50,000 in food to Quest Outreach Society during the past four years. Quest helps feed more than 11,000 people each month through various initiatives, including hot sit-down meals for the homeless, and support to other non-profit agencies such as women's shelters and recovery centres.

spud! has also donated nearly $7,000 to the Centre for Integrated Healing's introductory program for people living with cancer.

All these ethical initiatives impress Herb Barbolet, who has known Van Seters for many years and is the executive director of the non-profit society Farm Folk / City Folk, an organization that promotes environmental sustainability, human health and human rights.

"He comes to business with a high ethical standard, with a great deal of clarity, with a prodigious capacity for hard work," Barbolet said of Van Seters. "But the thing that probably has led to him being nominated for this award is his persistence."

If you have specific questions, email us at vancouver@spud.ca.

In Vancouver:
604-215-7783
vancouver@spud.ca

In Victoria:
250-383-7969
vanisland@spud.ca