VATIS UPDATE Article

Global multinationals Unilever, Red Bull, the Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo and SABMiller have announced that they have already put over 4.5 million HFC-free refrigeration units into operation worldwide. They work together under the ‘Refrigerants, Naturally!’ umbrella to phase-out HFCs from their refrigeration equipment as part of efforts to tackle climate change. “Our focus is replacing F-gases only with natural refrigerants, including ammonia, CO2 and hydrocarbons. And we focus particularly on plug-in point-of-sale refrigeration equipment,” said Julia.

Refrigerants, Naturally! is an initiative of international companies taking action against global warming and ozone layer depletion by replacing harmful greenhouse gases in point-of-sales cooling and freezing units with climate-friendly natural refrigerants. The objective of the group – which sees SABMiller, Red Bull, PepsiCo, the Coca-Cola Company and Unilever join forces with supporting partners Greenpeace and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) – is to make natural refrigerants the preferred cooling technology in a safe, reliable and cost-effective manner.

Together, member companies, the Coca-Cola Company, Red Bull, Unilever, SABMiller and PepsiCo have placed more than 4.5 million HFC-free refrigeration units around the world – collectively avoiding more than 27 million metric tonnes of CO2 emissions (based on the avoided HFC refrigerant emissions). So far the Coca-Cola Company has 284 CO2 cooler, vending machine or fountain machine models certified and ready to be used. By the end of 2015, the Coca-Cola Company had deployed more than 1.8 million HFC-free units.