"Green."  "Sustainable."  "Natural." "Eco-(fill in the blank)."

What do these four terms have in common?

Products labeled with these words align with our values as people who care about the health of ourselves, our families, and our world - right? They are all words we tend to be attracted to. Unfortunately, what they also have in common is that they are vague, used at best to sell products and at worst to purposefully mislead people by lulling us into a sense of shared values with a company or product. Unlike "organic" and "fair trade," the use of these words is unregulated by any government or certification agency. Many of us have become wary of these unregulated, undefined terms despite our attraction to them. Some worry that there is about to be a new word added to the greenwashing dictionary: "local."

Common Ground shoppers have always trusted the values of the Co-op and its staff's honesty in interpreting those values when purchasing products for the store. To maintain that trust in the current climate of mega-corporations attempting to paint themselves as "local," I believe it is time for Common Ground to clearly define what we mean by the terms "local" and "regional." To that end, a group of four Common Ground staff members began research in January of this year on the many ways other food co-ops across the country define these terms. Some co-ops define local food as food that is produced anywhere in their state, but does that make sense for a community that is almost six hours away from the southern-most tip of the state and only one hour from the Indiana border? Other stores define local food as any food grown or produced within a specific mile radius that varies from as few as 50 to as many as 450 miles away. The corporate Whole Foods chain famously defines it as food grown within an 8 hour drive of each specific store. Our staff committee has been meeting to create clear, workable definitions of the terms for our unique area.

What does the word "local" mean to you? We are working to have final definitions in place for both "local" and "regional" by the end of this month. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this important issue. Common Ground has long held the trust of the community as a place where we strive to bring you as much local food as possible and to build meaningful relationships with our local farms. We believe defining these terms will only strengthen that trust.

In Cooperation,

- Jacqueline