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Sometimes the least attractive change is the best thing to do for the weather.
While customers might have preferred to see supermarkets rolling out fancy electric trucks and using compostable packaging, it turned out that the best Countdown could do for the climate was to change the invisible gases that keep their refrigerators cool.
Refrigerators are essential for keeping food safe, but leaks from the long pipe networks that feed refrigerant gas to open refrigerators, as well as open refrigerators themselves, have a strong heating impact. These powerful climate-warming gases are also found in refrigerated trucks that deliver people’s food online and in cool stores that keep food refrigerated throughout the supply chain.
Some gases used in older refrigerators, including those we have at home, are so powerful in heating the climate that one kilogram of refrigerant has the same greenhouse impact as two tons of carbon dioxide – roughly the equivalent of running a car for six months.
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In Countdown’s case, gas leakage from cooling systems caused nearly half of the global warming created by all of the supermarket chain’s operations in 2017, Countdown CEO Kiri said for Corporate Affairs, Safety and Sustainability. Hannifin, a bigger impact than the chain’s delivery trucks. waste of food or use of electricity.
“(The gas) leaks all the time. Age and all kinds of things pass (to systems), and the fridges are open to the store … [so] they are spinning all the time. They are completely necessary and they are everywhere, ”he said.
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Supermarket refrigerators are essential for food safety, but they can account for the majority of a supermarket’s carbon footprint.
The problem is not limited to Countdown: this year, rival chain Foodstuffs counted that refrigerant gases account for 21% of its climate footprint. Pak ‘n Save and New World supermarkets have been putting low-emission natural refrigerants in new and renovated stores since 2014, and the chain plans to eventually switch all stores to climate-friendly systems.
Hannifin said that some Countdown stores have also been outfitted with systems that use natural refrigerants, which are ideal because they don’t leak gases that warm the planet.
But, because natural systems are expensive, most of the progress came simply from replacing old gases with better, if not ideal, synthetics with no emissions.
Hannifin said that switching even a minority of stores to less harmful refrigerants had cut emissions from Countdown’s refrigerators by more than half.
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Countdown’s general manager for Corporate Affairs, Safety and Sustainability, Kiri Hannifin, said the climate gain from the refrigerant gas switch was much higher than he expected.
The improvements reduced the proportion of the supermarket chain’s total greenhouse gas emissions caused by refrigerants from 46% of the total to 32% in four years. During the same period, the company also reduced its total greenhouse gas emissions, from 165,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year to 109,000, after also addressing food waste, vehicle fuel consumption and electricity use. .
The improvement was “much, much better than we expected,” Hannifin said. “It is so unappealing that most of it is due to our work with refrigerants, but the refrigerants are so bad and nobody talks about them.”
By continuing to modernize old stores and putting cleaner systems in new stores, Hannifin thought the chain could go three-quarters of the way to meeting its 2030 climate goal of reducing emissions by 63 percent, six years. before, in 2024, simply by changing refrigerants. “We are going to work hard. [But] the last 20 percent will be pretty hard to come by. “
The other important parts of a supermarket’s footprint are fuel used to transport produce and food waste, which produces methane that warms the planet when it breaks down.
Wasted food was reduced by donating unsold edible food to people, and the least attractive things were given to farmers to feed animals, Hannifin said. The supermarket chain is looking at other options for disposing of food scraps, including composting or using leftovers to brew beer.
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The unpackaged products were more difficult to nail than expected, Countdown said.
Ironically, a test conducted earlier this year of plastic-free product aisles increased food waste, and thus methane emissions. The test started just before the Level 4 crash and was terminated by Covid prematurely.
“We really thought it would be a great success. But actually, we had food waste. And we lost sales in the three stores we tested. “
It turned out that a lot of people wanted plastic barrier bags for items like apples. And there was more spoiled food. “We lost a lot of stock, on things like blueberries and raspberries … and it didn’t work out on paper. [packaging]. “Still, Countdown would refine the process and try again, he said.
The most expensive dial to move is transportation, according to the company’s cost-benefit reports.
While buyers may feel good to see an electric vehicle delivery truck in the driveway, at today’s prices, switching the fleet was “the least profitable for our money … compared to refrigerants, lighting, and food waste, “Hannifin said.
“If we were to spend $ 5 or 10 million, what we are doing, on refrigerants, it’s much better to spend on refrigerants than on changing our fleet.”
Hannifin said the trucks had improved fuel efficiency by adopting habits like always carrying a full load. But an electric vehicle delivery truck for online grocery orders costs about $ 35,000 more than a fossil fuel one, Hannifin said, which is why the chain had only bought a handful. Hydrogen trucks for long-distance travel were also “incredibly expensive,” Hannifin said.
The chain’s toughest climate challenge is yet to come.
Countdown aims to reduce its indirect emissions, including from its food suppliers and other parts of its supply chain, by 19% by 2030.
Arguably, that may be too little for suppliers to keep up with New Zealand’s climate targets, unless the entire economy moves faster, a criticism Hannifin acknowledged.
“We can only control what we can control,” Hannifin said. “So he hopes everyone in the supply chain, or (in) New Zealand, does better too.”
“(These are the emissions) that are much more difficult to reach, like people’s flights and hotel accommodations and Fonterra’s agriculture, things that are far below our supply chain.” Vendors like Fonterra and Unilever were measuring emissions, he said, but many others were not.
“What we probably end up doing is working on [what] we can control. So, for example … team transport. We [have] 21,000 people, most of them driving to work. So we have to make a program where we will encourage our team to use public transport. [and] Where can we make the biggest difference the fastest? “
“It’s difficult. And we need others to come to the party, including probably … government policy.”
