Last night Keilly Witman from EPA’s GreenChill Advanced Refrigeration Partnership, the program that attempts to get grocery stores to reduce ozone-killing refrigerant leaks, talked at EcoTuesday in DC. What I thought might not be our most exciting topic turned out to be one of the most interesting I’ve heard in the 8 months of co-hosting these events.

Ozone-depleting refrigerants are also potent greenhouse gases. One pound of the most commonly used HFC refrigerants has the same impact as about 4000 lbs of CO2. This is why Witman calls the reduction of refrigerant leaks the low-hanging-fruit of emissions control. There are 35,000 supermarkets in the US and each typically carries about 4000 lbs of refrigerant and leaks about 25% of that. So, you do the math: 1000 lbs of high global warming gas from each of 35,000 supermarkets = 35,000,000 lbs leaked each year. And its pretty simple and cheap to cut that number in half, which is where most GreenChill partner markets come in.

According to a 2008 GreenChill press release:

Compared to the rest of the supermarket industry, GreenChill partners are already emitting fewer ozone-depleting refrigerants and greenhouse gases than their competitors, and saving money at the same time. The partners’ savings in operating costs equal almost $13 million.

GreenChill has about 30 supermarket partners. Let’s start applying the Big Green Purse principle and ask: Is your market a Greenchill partner or should you shop elsewhere?

GreenChill now has 19 supermarket chain partners:

• ACME Markets
• Albertson’s
• bigg’s
• Bloom Markets
• Bottom Dollar
• Cub Foods
• Farm Fresh Food & Pharmacy
• Food Lion
• Giant Eagle
• Hannaford
• Harris Teeter
• Harvey’s Supermarkets
• Hornbacher’s
• Jewel/Osco
• King Kullen
• Lucky Supermarkets
• Organic Valley
• Price Chopper
• Publix
• Raley’s/Bel Air/Nob Hill/Food Source
• Shaw’s/Star Markets
• Shop’n Save
• Shoppers Food & Pharmacy
• Supervalu Inc.
• Sweetbay
• Weis/Kings/Mr. Z’s Markets
• Wild By Nature
• Whole Foods

So why isn’t your favorite market part of the program? Its pretty simple to significantly reduce leaks. First, participation in the GreenChill program is free, voluntary and non-regulatory.

But, and this is a biggie, a market cannot participate if it has outstanding and unresolved EPA issues. So, if your favorite market isn’t on the list its likely that it has other, more troublesome, environmental issues above and beyond ozone-damaging refrigerant leaks. All good reasons to shop elsewhere.

That said, GreenChill provides a tremendous amount of marketing support (that Witman says most grocers don’t even take advantage of) including a ton of incredible in-store marketing materials. They offer technical support and data to help with the ROI/cost-savings (the most common refrigerants cost about $9 a lb, so again, do the math) and risk management analysis.

Even better, GreenChill’s program for reducing leaks typically doesn’t require any capital improvements, but rather simply fixing the leaks in the piping throughout a store. Really, just a leak detector, some solder and a soldering iron.

If you are in the grocery, food, food equipment, etc. business look into GreenChill for yourself or your clients. It really is low hanging fruit.

Reprinted with permission from EcoWorldly.com