Grocery store chains Albertsons and Whole Foods have received awards from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for their work to green up refrigeration in their stores.
The agency is recognizing both supermarket chains under the GreenChill Partnership, that aims to reduce harmful refrigerant emissions, protect the ozone layer and combat climate change.
For the second time since the partnership was launched, Whole Foods received the Most Improved Emissions Rate Award. This award acknowledges the GreenChill Partner with the largest reduction in its corporate refrigerant emissions rate from the previous year.
Whole Foods’ efforts to stop refrigerant leaks led to a 17 percent reduction in the company’s refrigerant emissions rate in one year, according to the EPA.
Albertsons Intermountain West, owned by Supervalu, earned an EPA GreenChill Superior Goal Achievement Award for reaching the company’s emissions reduction goal this past year. There was no information available about the specific emissions reduction target met by Albertsons by press time, but this is the third consecutive year Supervalu or one of its chains has received a GreenChill award.
GreenChill works with supermarkets to help them transition to more environmentally friendly refrigerants, reduce the amount of refrigerant they use, eliminate refrigerant leaks, and adopt green refrigeration technologies and environmental best practices, the EPA says. More than 7,300 stores belong to the GreenChill Partnership, around 20 percent of the supermarket industry.
In April this year retail giant Target joined the GreenChill program.
Target has a goal of earning the Energy Star label for at least 75 percent of its U.S. buildings and plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent per sales dollar, both by 2016.
