Fresh & Easy Opening 2nd GreenChill Location
Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is bowing its second GreenChill-certified store, in Oceanside, California on Wednesday, Sept. 22. Two weeks previously, the 165-store chain opened its first GreenChill store in Rosemead, Calif., which was also the first grocery store in Southern California to feature a CO2 refrigeration unit.
El Segundo, Calif.-based Fresh & Easy worked closely with Kysor/Warren and Southwest Refrigeration on the Oceanside location, which has earned a silver certification award from the U.S. EPA GreenChill Partnership. According to the agency, GreenChill's food retail partners have refrigerant emissions rates 50 percent lower than the EPA-estimated industry average.
Fresh & Easy stores use an average of 30 percent less energy than a typical supermarket, according to the company. The division of U.K. grocer Tesco employs LED lighting in external signs and freezer cases, offers customer recycling in every store, and uses advanced refrigeration and freezer units to reduce energy usage.
“In addition to our efforts to reduce refrigerant emissions, we also are working on innovative ways to save energy, such as utilizing skylights, LED lighting and technological advancements like EnviroTower, which saves a significant amount of water in our stores,” noted Steve Hagen, the chain’s director of procurement, during a presentation at the FMI Energy & Store Development Conference this week in
As well as these eco-friendly building measures, Fresh & Easy opened its first LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) gold-certified store last year and is a pilot member of the LEED Volume Certification Program, has joined the California Climate Action Registry and The Climate Registry to disclose its greenhouse gas emissions, and has invested $13 million in a 500,000-square-foot solar roof installation at its distribution center in Riverside, Calif.
Fresh & Easy is opening nine stores in California this month, among them three locations in San Diego County this week. The chain also operates stores in Arizona and Nevada.