by Shane Henson — June 10, 2011—The EPA’s GreenChill Partnership awarded Sprouts Farmer’s Market in Westlake, California its Platinum Certification Award. Sprouts is only the third-ever recipient—and California’s first—of GreenChill’s highest honor for green refrigeration since the program’s creation in 2007.
GreenChill partners with food retailers to reduce refrigerant emissions and decrease their impact on the ozone layer and climate change. The EPA estimates that GreenChill partners’ corporate-wide refrigerant emissions are 50 percent lower than the industry average. According to the EPA, if every supermarket in the nation reduced its emissions to the average GreenChill store rate of 12 percent, the industry would save more than $100 million in refrigerant costs alone annually, while saving the equivalent of 22 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and 240 tons of ozone-depleting substances every year.
GreenChill’s Store Certification Program recognizes supermarkets’ achievements in preventing harmful emissions with silver, gold, and platinum-level certification awards. A silver-certified store prevents at least 65 percent, and a gold-certified store prevents at minimum 75 percent of the refrigerant emissions of an average store. There have only been two other platinum-level awards to stores that were certified to prevent 95 percent of an average store’s emissions. So far, both platinum stores have been completely leak free, notes the EPA.
To achieve the EPA’s GreenChill platinum-level certification, a store must meet stringent environmental criteria, including the following:
- Only use refrigerants that do not damage the Earth’s protective ozone layer;
- Reduce the size of its refrigerant charge by at least 85 percent from the industry average;
- Reduce annual refrigerant emissions to five percent or less of total store capacity; and
- Achieve 100 percent leak tightness at installation, following GreenChill’s Leak Tightness Guideline.
Sprouts has eight certified stores in California, Texas, and Colorado. The company was the first GreenChill partner to publicly state their goal to achieve store certification for every new store they build.
