DENVER — Julius Banks, national recycling and emissions reduction program manager, Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, urged food retailers yesterday to provide more input to the EPA on the phaseout of ozone-depleting R-22 HCFC refrigerant from their store refrigeration systems. “The supermarket industry should be at our door,” said Banks, who spoke at a session at the Food Marketing Institute’s Energy & Technical Services Conference here. “I can’t imagine why we don’t have more people telling us this is correct, or this is off.” The EPA’s next major deadline for the R-22 phaseout is 2010, when no production or importing of R-22 will be allowed for new refrigeration equipment. In 2020, production and importing of R-22 will be completely halted in the U.S. Because supplies will be limited, retailers still using R-22 after those dates will be dependent on recovered refrigerant. “This is the phase where [the EPA and the supermarket industry] can work together,” said Banks. “You can help us with how we get more R-22 into the reclamation stream.”

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