Supermarkets are often big CO2 emitters. Here’s what they could do to reverse the trend.
Supermarkets- who don’t love them? Convenience, a range of products in just about any category, possibilities for impulse purchases that give you a temporary high(but which most possibly would make you feel bad later), good music floating down from the overhead speakers, the queues at the check out counter….
Okay, maybe that last thing is not something to fall head over heels in love with. But mostly, we are glad for the existence of supermarkets.
But the convenience these stores bring also comes with a price for the climate. This is especially true with supermarket chains that operate multiple stores under the same brand umbrella- and come to think of it, these days, which supermarket isn’t part of a chain?
It’s not just the maintenance of the stores- often huge in size- which makes their consumption of power high. There are also allied activities which contribute to their power consumption.
Like delivering products to customers, bringing supplies to the store from wholesalers who are often located far from the stores.
Which is why the news that the Australian supermarket giant Coles has vowed to meet all its power requirements using renewable energy by 2025 is heartening. Preceding this pledge, the company signed an agreement with a Victorian windfarm to purchase electricity.
The news is even more significant given how Coles is among the fifty biggest polluters in Australia. The company has apparently emitted 1.6m tons of CO2e in the 2020 financial year.
The company has announced its intention to purchase power-generation certificates from Lal Lal Wind Farms. This means that by the financial year 2023, forty five percent of the company’s power consumption would be from renewables.
Positive as these goals are, that’s not where things should end, according to Greenpeace. They would want the company to be a part of a global alliance which is committed to a hundred percent clean energy. The alliance called RE100 has some of the biggest companies as signatories, including Woolworths in Australia.
Such moves are of particular significance for Australia given they are the worst among the world’s biggest fifty economies in terms of the amount allocated for “green recovery” post Covid-19 pandemic.
As for Coles, they have initiated other plans as well to counter their negative effects on climate change.
Like adding more number of doors on refrigerators- something that could improve the efficiency of fridges. Like streamlining logistics in such a way that the vehicles which come back to distribution centres don’t do so empty but pick up stuff from suppliers en route. And using alternatives to refrigeration gases that contribute to warming of climate.
In other words, Coles is getting creative. And we can hope that other companies- not just in Australia but all around the world- would also adopt such measures, if they haven’t already.
To use a line that’s often heard in blockbuster films with over-the-top storylines, The fate of the world depends on it.
