Environmental Protection Agency recognizes local Price Chopper store

SCHENECTADY, N.Y. A Northeast supermarket chain’s environmental initiatives have earned it recognition from the U.S. government.

Price Chopper announced that the Environmental Protection Agency had given its Colonie, N.Y., store the GreenChill “Best of the Best – Best GreenChill Certified Store – 2008-2009” award for its refrigeration systems, awarding it the highest level of GreenChill gold-level certification ever given a supermarket, at the Food Marketing Institute’s Sustainability Summit in San Francisco.

“We set out to build a store that would be world-class while demonstrating our leadership in social responsibility and environmental stewardship,” Price Chopper CEO Neil Golub said in a statement. “Throughout the planning and construction of this revolutionary new store, which is the first retail supermarket in the nation to derive power from an on-premise fuel cell, we have focused on making this store an extraordinary yet albeit practical example of energy efficiency in motion.”

The store’s refrigeration system runs on 282 pounds of refrigerant with a leak rate of less than 1% throughout the life of the equipment.