2Sustain

A new report, released today by London-based campaign group the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), reveals that only two percent of all major supermarket retail stores throughout the UK are using HFC-free refrigeration systems, despite awareness of the enormous environmental damage caused by HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons).

HFCs, originally introduced to reduce ozone-depleting CFCs, are now known to have a global warming impact 3,800 times greater than CO2.

Natural refrigerant alternatives are available, and some companies (see earlier post about Coca-Cola here) are already transitioning to eco-friendly cooling technologies. The EIA, however, would like to see UK supermarkets moving faster towards HFC-free refrigeration. (more…)

Yesterday, the Coca-Cola Company and its bottling partners announced that 100 percent of their new vending machines and coolers will be hydrofluorocarbon-free (HFC-free) by 2015.

The transition to HFC-free refrigeration will reduce the equipment’s direct greenhouse gas emissions by 99 percent.

Since 2000, the Coca-Cola Company has been working with Greenpeace to phase out the use of HFCs, which have been shown to be a major contributor of carbon-equivalent emissions. In fact, here’s a statistic that may surprise you: eliminating HFCs in the commercial refrigeration industry would be equivalent to eliminating the annual greenhouse gas emissions of Germany or Japan. (more…)