Green Grocers

Supermarkets are getting serious about the environment, and two new stores drive home that message.

In February, Winn-Dixie cut the opening-day ribbon on a 55,000-sq.-ft. store in Covington, La. – the first GreenChill certified grocery store in the state, and only the 26th in the nation.

GreenChill is an EPA Partnership with food retailers designed to help reduce refrigerant emissions and decrease the industry’s impact on the ozone layer and climate change. Supermarkets that reduce refrigerant emissions to at least 65 percent below the industry average
are eligible for certification.

U.K. supermarket group Tesco took a giant step toward becoming a carbonneutral company by 2050 with the opening of its first zero-carbon store in February. Located in Cambridgeshire, it is a timber framed building rather than steel, and uses skylights and sun pipes to reduce lighting costs. Its combined heat and power plant is powered by renewable bio-fuels and exports extra electricity back to the national grid.

The refrigerators, which tend to be an especially complex hurdle for food retailers, feature energy-saving doors. In addition, harmful HFC refrigerant gases have been replaced.

Tesco chief executive Sir Terry Leahy reports that the new store cost 30 percent more to build, but uses 50 percent less energy. “With oil at $70 a barrel it is a business case in itself,” he says. The Cambridgeshire store “shows that you can dramatically alter how much carbon you use and life can go on.”