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Price Chopper Named to 2012 GXT Earth Day Honor Roll

By contributor,
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Price Chopper,selected from a wide range of nominees, was recognized by GXT Green for its siginificant contributions to sustainability efforts and was named to the 2012GXT Earth Day Honor Roll.

In its announcement, GXT cited Price Chopper’s commitment to green building and environmental initiatives, “Price Chopper has shown tremendous leadership in sustainability including LEED Certifications, and an innovative Natural Gas Fuel Cell that provides 60% of the electric energy for its newest Colonie store. They have made a public commitment to a sustainable seafood supply in their chain. They continue to commit to more sustainable stores,products, and packaging for their products, which ensures that they minimize their impact on our environment.”

“PriceChopper is committed to reducing energy usage and carbon impacts and investingin sustainable and renewable technologies,” said Bill Sweet, PriceChopper’s vice president of engineering and construction. “Our shoppers will see displays and kiosks throughout the stores that explain what they are looking at and what we have done to conserve utilities and save energy. We hope that some of these green initiatives and the demonstrated results will inspire individuals to change their own behaviors.”

GXT Green is a division of Global Exchange Technologies (www.globextec.com),that helps the corporate community understand and mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions through verified, high value and high volume carbon offset projects such as rain forest preservation or reforestation.

PriceChopper is actively advancing its Corporate Social Responsibility platform and to that end is pursuing a variety of other environmentally sustainable solutions including:

  • Recycling more than75% of construction waste (rather than disposing of it in landfills orincinerators) on all new ground up construction projects.
  • Designing the use of natural lighting throughout the store to reduce electrical consumption
  • Utilizing environmentally sustainable building materials throughout the store with a high degree of recycled content
  • Obtaining (whereavailable) local construction materials to minimize environmental impacts from transportation
  • Installing state-of-the-art refrigeration equipment to minimize ozone depleting refrigerant charges
  • Recovering the heat from the refrigeration system and reusing it for space heating and hot water production for use at store level.
  • Recycling waste produce from trimming through a hydrator process which reduces the produce to“gray water” and eliminates waste from being transported and disposed of at landfills. (at select store locations only)
  • Utilizing highefficiency, lighting systems throughout the store and in exterior signage
  • Price Chopper has ten registered supermarket projects pending certification by the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program. Two stores have all ready received Silver Level certification, one store has received Gold Level certification and the retailer’s corporate headquarters in Schenectady, N.Y.is anticipated to receive Gold Level certification.