Price Chopper Announces Earth Day Programs

SCHENECTADY, NY (04/17/2008)(readMedia)-- Price Chopper Supermarkets, a Golub Corporation company, is launching a series of customer and associate promotions in synergy with the company’s existing programs and standards for sustainability and energy efficiency.

“Price Chopper understands that our customers, our associates and our communities have come to expect corporate citizens to demonstrate their commitment to protecting the earth’s resources and our environment,” said Mona Golub, Price Chopper’s Vice President of Public Relations and Consumer Services. “In addition to our annual Earth Day promotional activities, we continue to implement initiatives that build upon our corporate philosophy of working to reduce our energy use and emissions and lessen the impact we make on our environment every day. This philosophy includes everything from our commitment to energy conservation, innovative energy efficient equipment and the procurement of locally grown and manufactured products.”

Price Chopper’s Earth Day promotions for 2008 include:

• Seedlings for Stewardship - All Price Chopper stores will be selling balsam fir, red pine and blue spruce seedlings to benefit the Forest Stewardship Council. The seedlings will retail for $2.99 of which $1.00 will be donated to the Council to assist their efforts in promoting responsible management of the world’s forests.

• Design Contest for Kids – In addition to introducing a new reusable bag design on Earth Day (the first was launched on Earth Day 2007), Price Chopper is sponsoring a bag design contest for kids. Students ages 5-18 are invited to submit their artwork/designs for the theme “If every day were Earth Day, what would it look like?” Entries must be in color on 8 1/2 x 11 recycled white paper, unfolded, and received in the Promotions Dept. by Saturday, May 31. Contest winners will receive a $500 US Savings bond, an iPod Nano, a $50 iTunes gift card and a $50 Price Chopper gift card. Five runners-up will win a $50 Price Chopper gift card.

The winning student’s school will receive 100,000 Tools for Schools Bonus Points, which equates to roughly $1,000 in value, or school administrators can choose from a 32” LCD TV, a multimedia projector, or an HP Compact Notebook.

Price Chopper’s commitment to the environment extends well beyond these promotions. The progressive chain has operated its own Resource Recovery Center adjacent to the Main Office in Schenectady, NY for the better part of the last three decades, which includes a full scale recycling operation that processes cardboard, plastic and glass bottles and aluminum cans, in addition to millions of plastic bags.

A dedicated continuous improvement effort in the late 1990s led to reduced lighting and oven usage overnight, reduced neon signage, re-commissioning, lighting and fan retrofits, excess spotlight removal, peak load shedding, motion sensor installations and an ongoing chain wide energy awareness campaign, which resulted in a 5%+ reduction in its comparable store energy usage, saving nearly 5 million kWh of electricity and 500,000 therms of Natural Gas. Continuing partnerships with NYSERDA, Connecticut Energy Efficiency Fund, EnerNOC (MA) and Efficiency Vermont helped the chain to reduce its energy consumption by an additional 5% en route to achieving a designation of 'Superior Portfolio-Wide Energy Performance' from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Next month, Price Chopper will be honored by the League of Conservation Voters in New York and awarded distinction as a “Northeast Business Leader for Energy Efficiency” by Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP) in CT.

As the first supermarket in New York State to invest in wind power embarks upon building a new generation of stores, its engineering and construction team are hard at work sourcing out materials and processes that reduce waste and aim operations at optimum levels of efficiency, such as: pre-cast concrete wall panels, colored concrete floors that can be cleaned with soap and water, skylights, increased auto-dimming lighting, LED lit reach-in doors for chilled and frozen product rather than conventional open cases, state-of the art energy management controls and fuel cell supplement power from the grid. Price Chopper’s new Colonie, NY store (scheduled to begin construction later this spring) will be the first silver level LEED® Certified supermarket in the state of New York. LEED®, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Buildings Rating System, is the Green Building Council’s nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings.

As the crowning touch to its 75th Anniversary celebration in November 2007, Price Chopper executives announced plans to build a new, state of the art Main Office complex in downtown Schenectady. The 6-story 240,000 sq. ft. building will incorporate: the utilization of recycled materials (e.g. carpeting, steel, etc.) wherever possible, daylight harvesting, raised flooring throughout the building to allow for more efficient installation of electrical and HVAC components, energy management controls, rain water harvesting for irrigation, fuel cell to supplement power from the grid and photovoltaics en route to gold level LEED-certification.

As part of the expansion of the Saratoga Springs (NY) store on Route 50, Price Chopper has installed a revolutionary new CO2 refrigeration unit which has 3000 times less global warming potential than older refrigerant systems because it reuses CO2 already in the air. This new process will be installed in future new construction and expansions throughout the Price Chopper footprint.

Price Chopper is currently testing (in VT and MA) a revolutionary new process for converting non-compostable organic materials into a liquid for easy and safe disposal, reducing the diesel-based energy necessary to collect and haul these materials away. The stores are also testing a new cleaning system which utilizes highly oxygenated water to perform like a powerful detergent; not only dispensing with the environmental impact of cleaning chemicals but also using 70% less water than conventional scrubbing methods.

Along with assistance from all of its laundry detergent vendors, Price Chopper has implemented “compaction” - new, smaller plastic containers with more highly concentrated forms of liquid detergent that require 32% less water and up to 23% less energy, not to mention less plastic packaging. Gone are the 300oz. bottles of old; here, are the 150oz. bottles of concentrate that will clean the same amount of clothing. Compaction will also decrease the number of cases, pallets, trucks and gallons of diesel fuel needed to bring the product to market.

“We firmly believe that in order for our company to fulfill its obligations to our customers and our associates, we must be committed to conserving our natural resources,” said Golub. “We continue to invest in innovative technologies and programs that accomplish just that. Perhaps more importantly, though, we work to ensure that Price Chopper’s corporate culture reflects our commitment to environmental stewardship and social responsibility as a way of doing business.”

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Based in Schenectady, NY, the Golub Corporation owns and operates more than 100 Price Chopper grocery stores in New York, Vermont, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The family-owned company prides itself on longstanding traditions of innovative food merchandising, leadership in community service, and cooperative associate relations. Golub’s approximately 24,000 associates collectively own 51% of the company’s privately held stock