green groceries
- noun
- She buys green groceries to reduce plastic and support farms that use sustainable methods.
Examples
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The university café started offering discounts on green groceries certified organic or produced within fifty miles.
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Local stores now label some items as green groceries when packaging is recyclable and sourcing is local.
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I always buy green groceries at the local farmer's market.
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Do you prefer green groceries over conventional ones?
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She buys green groceries to reduce plastic waste and support organic farms.
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Local stores now label items as green groceries if they use recyclable packaging and local sourcing.
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The university café offers discounts on green groceries that are certified organic.
How Green
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'groceries produced in environmentally friendly ways' is directly and transparently built from 'green' (relating to ecology/sustainability) plus 'grocery' (foodstuffs/household items). This adjective–noun composition follows a standard, cross-linguistically common pattern (e.g. 'green products'), so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Green groceries uses green to mean 'environmentally friendly' and groceries for food and shop items, so it names food and goods that are made or packaged in eco-friendly ways. So it means 'groceries produced or packaged in environmentally friendly ways'.