Local Supermarkets Win GreenChill Awards

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s GreenChill Advanced Refrigeration Partnership recognized a handful of supermarkets for reducing their use of greenhouse gas refrigerants that deplete the Earth’s ozone layer and contribute to climate change.

EPA estimates that if every supermarket in the nation joined GreenChill and reduced its emissions to the current GreenChill average, the nation could save the equivalent of 22 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and 240 ozone depleting potential tons every year, all while saving $108 million in refrigerant expenses annually.

This year’s awards recognize partners’ most recent successes. Awardees include:

• King Kullen
• Wild by Nature
• Whole Foods

King Kullen and Wild by Nature, both supermarkets headquartered in Bethpage, received New Partner Awards. New partners pledge to go beyond regulatory requirements by measuring and tracking refrigerant emissions, and then setting reduction targets for those emissions. Partners also agree to use only ozone-friendly alternatives in all new and remodeled stores.

Whole Foods, a nationwide chain of supermarkets, received the award for Most Improved Emissions Rate. As a GreenChill Founding Partner, Whole Foods shares GreenChill’s mission to minimize supermarkets’ impact on the Earth’s ozone layer and on climate change. EPA recognized another food retailer that can be found nationwide, Supervalu, for achieving its emissions target in 2008/2009.

For additional information on the EPA GreenChill Partnership visit: www.epa.gov/greenchill.