WASHINGTON - Star Market at Chestnut Hill in Newton, Mass., is the first grocery store in the nation to receive the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) GreenChill Partnership platinum store award. The advanced refrigeration technology in the new store, which is part of the Shaw’s line of supermarkets, significantly reduces its impact on the environment and saves money by cutting the use of refrigerants by 85 percent compared with the typical supermarket. The store uses glycol for cooler cases and carbon dioxide for freezer cases to reduce its refrigerant charge.

The GreenChill Advanced Refrigeration Partnership is an EPA cooperative alliance with the supermarket industry to promote advanced technologies, strategies, and practices that reduce refrigerant charges and emissions of ozone-depleting substances and greenhouse gases.

GreenChill partners emit about 50 percent less emissions than the industry average, and have pledged to continually lower them as part of the program. EPA estimates that if every supermarket in the nation joined GreenChill and reduced emissions to the current GreenChill average, the U.S. would prevent 22 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and 240 tons of ozone-depleting substances annually, and save $108 million in refrigerant costs each year. GreenChill has 46 partners, with more than 6,500 retail food stores in 47 states.

For more information, visit www.epa.gov/greenchill.

Publication date: 11/16/2009