A water-and-propane-based system is being introduced toin-store refrigeration to help reduce the company's environmental impact.Waitrose committed to stop using the alternative, hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HFC),for refrigeration in all new and refitted shops from 2010.

Mark Ryce, head of commercial and construction supply chainwith the John LewisPartnership, which owns the supermarket, said: "When we looked at our carbonemissions, aside from energy and fuel, the biggest area we needed to look at washarmful refrigerant gases. Our engineering team came to the conclusion that theonly way we were going to deal with this was to remove them."

Speaking at the Sustainable Purchasing and Supply Summit inLondon yesterday, he said that by combining the new technology with buildingheating and air conditioning at the design stage, Waitrose was able to create a"cost-neutral solution".

"To do that we needed new manufacturing lines to build thetype of refrigeration cabinets we required. We needed chiller plants to be usedin a way that they had never been used in food retail, and we needed designers,contractors and consultants with open minds to pull all this together with us,"Ryce said. "We achieved that because our suppliers recognised how important oursustainability objectives were to us."

Ryce said that the supplier had to understand why it wasworth making the investment in the new technology. "They understood ourenvironmental objectives and it was an innovation worth investing in."

In its 2010 CSR report, the John Lewis Group said it was the firstmajor UK food retailer to commit to stop using HFCs for refrigeration in all newand refitted shops from 2010. It said the water-and-propane-based, naturalrefrigerant uses 20 per cent less energy compared with an equivalent shopoperating with traditional systems. The new approach will be rolled out to allits shops by 2020, the report said.

Taken from Supplymanagement.com article by Lindsay Clark on 1 April 2011 (http://www.supplymanagement.com/news/2011/supplier-helps-waitrose-find-a-cool-solution/)