latest-news-items

GREENLIFE Goes Korean!

Our Greenlife Town Store played host to a Korean film crew this week.

Click on the 'crew' to see more!

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GREENLIFE On The Dart

For the second year running, Greenlife staff took to the River Dart, courtesy of 'Canoe Adventures', for their annual summer outing.

Click on the canoes to see more!

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GREENLIFE Staff Member celebrates his 40th!

Matt Sermon, our Totnes Town Store Stock Controller, recently celebrated his 40th birthday.

Click on Matt for more revealing pictures!

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GREENLIFE PRESS RELEASE

GREENLIFE clothing gives store exciting new image

Totnes-Based GREENLIFE, the leading health food store, is set to embark on an exciting new era with the introduction of identifiable clothing for all staff from June 2008.

GREENLIFE has introduced the clothing as an aid to customers and to increase awareness of the store and website brands. The decision to introduce the clothing followed the success of a trial run during the GREENLIFE DIRECT day in April. Since then staff have embraced the idea of the clothing.

With the health food industry experiencing one of its toughest times in years GREENLIFE’s owners believe the introduction of the clothing will help enhance the company’s already strong reputation within the local community and beyond.

Several GREENLIFE clothing options are available allowing the south west’s leading health store to also become the regions most identifiable. The clothing has the GREENLIFE logo on the front and the greenlifedirect.co.uk web address on the back. The options, all green, include a t-shirt, shirt and apron.

The move is the first time in GREENLIFE's 18-year history that such clothing has been introduced for all staff. It will ensure no customer is left in any doubt who in the store is able to help them and will bring an end to what GREENLIFE director Jamie Sermon called the "Do you work here?" syndrome.

"The introduction of identifiable clothing is an important step for GREENLIFE" said Jamie. "Not only will it help customers seek help or information, but it will also be a vital tool in the promotion of the store’s new-look and vastly improved website, greenlife.co.uk."

The greenlife.co.uk website has also undergone a dramatic overhaul in recent months. It is now full of fun features and is brimming with information about the shop and the products it offers. Indeed, the choices available to online customers is growing each day as new items are added to ensure customers have the best choice of GREENLIFE’s most valued product offerings.

GREENLIFE already delivers products to customers all over the world through the greenlifedirect.co.uk site and the company is confident the online presence will continue to play an increasing role in maintaining the group’s profitability.

Jamie said: "The health food industry faces challenges from many areas, not least competition from supermarkets, online retailers, the rising cost of fuel and food as well as a general slowing of the economy. But one of the most dramatic issues facing GREENLIFE and others in the health retail sector, is forthcoming legislation from the European Union aimed at strangling the supplements industry. If this is introduced, as planned, on 1 January 2010 it will, at a stroke, remove many of GREENLIFE’s supplements from the shelves. We must ensure GREENLIFE is ready to face that challenge. We are taking several measures to ensure GREENLIFE’s continued success and the introduction of identifiable clothing is an extremely important one."

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GREENLIFE Prize Winners

Following on from the GREENLIFE DIRECT in store day online quiz; we are pleased to announce that the winners have now been presented with their prizes.

The first picture shows Liz from GD presenting the Trayner Glasses to Tina Elliot from Totnes .. whilst the second picture shows Pam from GD presenting the Colloidal Silver to Olivia McGill from Stoke Gabriel.

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GREENLIFE in STORE

GREENLIFE had an in store day on 29 April to promote their GREENLIFE DIRECT website.

Staff were handing out an online quiz & money-off vouchers; and were also available to answer any questions.

All were looking resplendent in their new GREENLIFE uniform tops.

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GREENLIFE on TOUR

Mike Sermon (MD), Matt Sermon (Chief Buyer) and Julie Hore (Co-Manager) represented GREENLIFE at the Natural Products Expo, held at London Olympia on the 13/14 April .

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Becky Sherwood (Supplements Advisor - left), was delighted to represent GREENLIFE at the Natural Trade Show in Brighton at the beginning of March.

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POUND for POUND

The new Totnes Pound was recently launched with the help of GREENLIFE & ANTHONY STEEN, Conservative MP for the South Hams since 1983.

The Totnes Pound is an initiative of Transition Town Totnes Economics and Livelihoods group, originally being launched in March 2007.

The anticipated benefits of the Totnes Pound are:
To build resilience in the local economy by keeping money circulating in the community and building new relationships
To get people thinking and talking about how we spend our money
To encourage more local trade and thus reduce food and trade miles
To encourage tourists to use local businesses

How it works:-
You can get this money in exchange for pounds sterling. You go out and use them around Totnes in place of what we think is ‘real’ money. Already more than 50 businesses have signed up and accept them.

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Plastic Carrier Bags

As from 31^st January 2008 Greenlife will no longer be accepting plastic carrier bags for recycling. Would customers please ensure that when they are shopping they have a reusable bag with them. We will continue to give away free degradable carrier bags to help customers who do not have a bag with them, but we would ask you all to support us in our campaign to stop using plastic carrier bags.

Why have we taken this decision? Well, we are Greenlife and as a Company we strive to practice what we preach. The Greenlife isn’t just about eating organic vegetables, although that is a good starting point! It is a way of life, a way of living in today’s world responsibly. This means continually re-evaluating our use of resources: we already recycle as much as possible (including unwanted till receipts, glass, paper, cardboard, tetra packs, packaging etc.) but there is always more that can be done and the first thing we are looking at this year is plastic carrier bags.

However we improve our rate of recycling you can still only recycle a plastic bag 4-5 times at best before the plastic becomes such a low grade material that it is useless; some call this down cycling. Many plastic bags in this country (if recycled here and not shipped to China ) are recycled into bin liners which then are obviously re-used and go to landfill! Each time a plastic bag is recycled they have to add a certain amount of new material to that product to keep up the quality that we consumers demand.

We thank all our customers who over the years have provide us with their old carrier bags for reuse and hope that they will continue to support us in trying to take the next step which is to stop using them altogether. As a shop we have used degradable bags for some time now and these will continue to be available during the transition. We also sell a green canvas bag for just £1; the proceeds from the sale of these bags going to charity.

Significantly, the degradable bags which we are using are part of the d2w™ range do not need a biologically active environment to start degrading - this will happen even if the plastic is left in the open air! This is very important if we are to address the serious litter problems caused by waste plastic. For this reason in particular, d2w™ 'totally degradable' plastic is superior to 'bio-degradable' which requires the plastic to be in a biologically active environment (for example, by being buried in the ground) before the degradation process is initiated.