How many times did a parent scold you, "Don't stand with the refrigerator door open! You're wasting electricity." when you were growing up? And yet every day, in grocery stores all across the country, refrigerators (and sometimes even freezers!) that contain meats, dairy products, fruit juices and more don't even have a door to close. Instead, from the moment the store opens until after it closes (at which point a flimsy plastic curtain is pulled over them overnight) these open door refrigerators are pumping cold air into the grocery store putting added strain on the store's temperature control systems. You can even feel the chill in the air when you walk down the dairy aisle past huge rows of open refrigerators! Not to mention the open top freezers that are scattered throughout the store.
Sobey's tell us that:
"Replacing open multi-deck freezers and coolers with closed door units that significantly reduce the volume of air that escapes."
"The use of closed door units has resulted in energy savings of approximately 50% per freezer/cooler."
However, these steps have not yet been taken in each and every Sobey's grocery store nor have they been fully adopted by the other leading grocery store chains. Enough is enough, we need to tell these chains to close the fridge door and reduce their carbon emissions by stopping this waste of energy!