Chilling Facts Campaign on Supermarket Refrigeration (Feb 10)

Launched on 1st February, 2010, the second Chilling Facts survey has been very successful in drawing attention to the huge impact of supermarket refrigeration on climate change.

I’ve been working with the Environmental Investigation Agency  on their campaign to get the supermarkets to switch to climate-friendly refrigeration gases.   We ranked the retailers on their performance and gave them detailed feedback on our assessment, covering in-store refrigeration, distribution and warehouses.  Next year, we plan to include air conditioning too as these systems also contain HFCs, a gas that is about 3,800 times worse than CO2 in terms of its global warming impact.  And there are viable alternatives.

Media coverage on the first day included a full page spread in the Guardian and rolling news story on Sky, as well as Channel Five News.   I helped set up this campaign and along with Fioannuala Walravens from the Environmental Investigation Agency and Nick Cox from Earthcare News am a judge.  The three of us created a scoring system to rank the supermarkets on how well they have performed.   Waitrose, the winner this year, was close to the bottom last year.  And Co-op are the only store to have actually reduced their point count.

Also had Sky News coverage.

 

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