Food Lion honored with EPA’s Montreal Protocol Award

Salisbury, N.C. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded Food Lion with its 2010 Montreal Protocol Award, a global achievement given for protecting the ozone layer. An international panel of judges representing government, industry, and non-governmental organizations reviewed the nominations before selecting the final 19 international recipients.

"Food Lion has been at the forefront of every major innovation in supermarket refrigeration technology for the past three years," said Keilly Witman, Manager of EPA's GreenChill Partnership. "It is hard to make environmental advances if no one is willing to be the first to try out environmentally friendlier technologies. GreenChill has come to count on Food Lion to be the first, and Food Lion continues to rise to the occasion."

Food Lion was one of the first companies to commit to EPA's GreenChill Partnership. Through routine leak testing, quarterly reporting, and benchmarking by maintenance technicians on leak rates, the company achieved a 7.4% reduction in its corporate-wide commercial refrigeration emissions rate since joining GreenChill.

"Food Lion has a long-standing commitment to protecting the environment, identifying ways to become more energy efficient and ensuring we are a socially responsible corporation," said Susan Sollenberger, director of energy and facility services at Delhaize America and Food Lion. "We have a number of sustainability initiatives under way, including efforts to minimize ozone depletion by reducing refrigerants and selecting more environmentally friendly alternatives for our facilities and stores. We believe this is the right thing to do as global and responsible corporate citizens."