BOSTON – Two supermarket chains with local operations, Whole Foods Market Inc. and Hannaford Bros. Co., are among the 10 founding partners in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new GreenChill Advanced Refrigeration Partnership, the EPA’s New England regional office announced today.
GreenChill is a voluntary program to promote green technologies and practices. Its goals include protecting the ozone layer, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and saving money.
The founding partners – which also include companies from the refrigeration and chemical refrigerant industries – “have pledged to go above and beyond regulatory requirements by establishing an inventory of current refrigerant emissions that may affect climate change and the stratospheric ozone layer, and then setting reduction targets,” the EPA said. Partners also will participate in a public-private research initiative to assess how new technologies affect energy efficiency, refrigerant leaks and the need for ozone-depleting refrigerant recharges.
Whole Foods (Nasdaq: WFMI) – based in Austin, Texas – is a retailer of natural and organic foods via 270 locations in North America and the United Kingdom. The chain has more than two dozen supermarkets in New England, including stores in Providence and Cranston.
Hannaford Bros. – based near Portland, Maine – has more than 160 stores in the Northeast, though none are in Rhode Island. Its Bay State operations include two Hannaford Supermarket and Pharmacies in Bristol County, in Taunton and Easton.
The other founding partners in GreenChill are Food Lion, Publix and Giant Eagle supermarkets, Honeywell, DuPont, HillPhoenix (a Dover company), Kysor/Warren and Arkema. The supermarket partners have pledged to use only ozone-friendly alternative refrigerants and advanced refrigeration technologies in all new and remodeled stores – actions the EPA estimates could save more than $12 million per year.
Additional information about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s GreenChill Partnership is available at epa.gov.
To learn more about Whole Foods Market Inc. (Nasdaq: WFMI), visit www.WholeFoodsMarket.com. For more information about Hannaford Bros. Co., visit www.Hannaford.com .
