Canada’s First Carbon Neutral Grocery Store Opened in British Columbia

(Coquitlam, B.C., April 25, 2006) “Thrifty Foods is proud to announce that we will be completely offsetting the greenhouse gases produced by our new store in Coquitlam with the planting of trees with Tree Canada,” said CEO Milford Sorensen today.

In partnership with Tree Canada, Thrifty Foods recently planted 1,776 trees in Manning Provincial Park and Colony Farm Regional Park―enough trees to absorb the carbon emissions from the store in a year, thus making Thrifty Foods’ Coquitlam store the first-ever carbon neutral grocery store in Canada.

Planting trees may sound simple, but it’s also a sound strategy to combat the effects of global warming through “carbon sequestration.” That’s just a fancy way of saying that planting trees increases the absorption of carbon dioxide and the production of oxygen in its lifetime. The average Canadian tree sequesters 200 kg of atmospheric carbon. "We thank Tree Canada for allowing us to offset our own carbon emissions and we encourage others to do the same," said Sorensen.

"We are proud that Thrifty Foods has chosen Tree Canada to help lessen its carbon footprint," said Jeff Monty, Tree Canada President. "We urge other companies, suppliers and individuals to follow Thrifty Foods’ example and offset their operating emissions by planting trees with us.”


For more information, contact:

Jeffrey Monty, President, Tree Canada, jmonty@treecanada.ca (613) 567-5545 x224

Susan Postma, Communications Coordinator, spostma@thriftyfoods.com (250) 483-1177

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Tree Canada is a charitable organization established to encourage Canadians to plant and care for trees in urban and rural environments. To date, Tree Canada has engaged more than 60 Canadian companies and government agencies to support the planting of more than 75 million trees, the greening of more than 350 schoolyards, 6 national urban forestry conferences, and other efforts to sensitize Canadians to the benefits of planting and maintaining trees. More information about Tree Canada is available at www.tcf-fca.ca .

This release was published on openPR.