Let’s keep the heat inside and shut the doors

Closing a shop door in winter can save up to 50% in energy use and carbon emissions. If all shops on the high street did this the saving would be immense.  Shops do not want to because they think it will affect their business. Research has shown, it will not. Especially if there is a big OPEN sign.

Many politicians and scientists support the Close the Door campaign. Can you do it too by speaking with local shop owners, writing letters to the editor in your local paper and getting your friends to sign this Change.org petition.

Fridge doors too

Asides from shop doors we also need a campaign for supermarkets and shops to put doors on their open fridges. Supermarket fridges use 1% of all of the electricity in the UK. It may not sound like a lot, but that’s enough to power over 800,000 homes for a year.

There’s a simple fix that could slash supermarket electricity use by up to 40% – adding doors to all fridges in stores.  Supermarkets all over France are voluntarily doing this to cut down their environmental impact. Now, we need to push supermarkets in the UK to do the same.

Supermarket bosses say they don’t want to put doors on their fridges because they’re worried it will stop people from buying their products. But when the Coop started adding fridge doors to reduce their environmental impact they said it made no difference to their sales.

Corporations need to be held accountable for their contributions to the climate crisis, and supermarkets have no excuse not to implement this simple fix. But they’re not going to do anything unless they think they might lose customers over it.

Here’s a 38 Degrees petition that’s gathering momentum to make just this point

Further resources:

Daily Telegraph Article: Supermarkets told to shut the door as it emerges open fridges use one per cent of Britain’s electricity

Metro Article: Campaign to ban doorless fridges in supermarkets

Thanks to Julia from Transition Town Lewes for this suggestion