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U.S. EPA honors Local, Regional supermarkets for Environmental Achievements

Release Date: 09/21/2011
Contact Information: Francisco Arcaute, (213) 244-1815, Cell (213) 798-1404, arcaute.francisco@epa.gov

(9/21/11) SAN FRANCISCO – Sprouts Farmers Market and Supervalu, parent company of Lucky’s Southern California and Albertsons, are among the recipients of this year’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s GreenChill Partnership 2011 Environmental Achievement Awards. GreenChill helps supermarkets use environmentally-friendlier refrigerants, reduce refrigerant leaks, and adopt green refrigeration technologies. More than 7,300 stores belong to the GreenChill Partnership, a full 20 percent of the supermarket industry.

"Our GreenChill award winners deserve recognition for going above and beyond regulatory requirements," said Deborah Jordan, Air Division Director for the EPA’s Pacific Southwest region. "They demonstrate corporate environmental leadership through their work to protect our climate and ozone layer.”

For the second consecutive year, Sprouts Farmers Market, which operates stores in Arizona and California, received GreenChill’s Best Emissions Rate Award - the program’s most prestigious annual environmental achievement award - for achieving the lowest corporate-wide emissions rate of all GreenChill participating companies.

Sprouts’ Westlake District store in Thousand Oaks, Calif., was also recognized with GreenChill’s Best of the Best Award, in recognition of the store’s refrigeration technology that prevents 95% of the harmful refrigerant emissions of a typical supermarket. For the first time in the history of the GreenChill Partnership, both awards have gone to the same company.

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market earned GreenChill’s first Store Certification Excellence Award for achieving GreenChill’s certification standards for 14 individual stores in the past year, more than any other retailer in the nation. The company also earned GreenChill’s Distinguished Partner Award for overall efforts. Fresh & Easy’s goal is to achieve GreenChill Store Certification for every new store the company opens and they are leading the charge in using environmentally-friendlier refrigerants.

The Raley’s Family of Fine Stores, which operates stores in California and Nevada, and Supervalu – one of the largest grocery chains in the US - earned GreenChill’s Superior Goal Achievement Award for achieving challenging emissions reduction goals this past year.

Whole Foods, which operates stores across EPA’s Region 9, again received the Most Improved Emissions Rate Award, honoring the GreenChill Partner with the most dramatic reduction in its corporate refrigerant emissions rate from the previous year. Whole Foods’ efforts to stop refrigerant leaks led to a 17% reduction in the company’s refrigerant emissions.

Additional information on EPA’s GreenChill Partnership is available at www.epa.gov/greenchill.