Sainsbury’s will today unveil plans to reduce its carbon footprint by a third by switching to carbon dioxide refrigerators, according to reports.
The supermarket chain will tell an Environment Agency conference in London that it plans to replace the use of F-gases, which are pumped through fridges to cool them down, across its store network with less polluting CO2.
The retailer aims to convert all fridges in 135 of its 800 stores by 2014, with the rest being completed by 2030.
By doing so, Sainsburys claims it will be able to slash the carbon footprint from its current store base by around a third.
Commenting on the move, Chief executive Justin King said: Fridges are by far and away the biggest source of CO2 emissions in any supermarket through both the energy required to power them and the refrigerants themselves.”
“If all supermarkets in the UK switched to this sort of refrigeration, the reduction in CO2 emissions would amount to around two million tonnes a year.”
Mr King added that from next year all new Sainsbury’s stores will use CO2 fridges as standard.
Sainsbury’s and Marks and Spencer became the first supermarkets to receive the highest A rating in a new green study carried out by watchdog Consumer Focus.
The two food retailers were found to have made the biggest improvement on green issues over the last two years, with Sainsbury’s scoring highly on packaging, organic produce and sustainable fish .
