Hindustan Unilever rolling out eco-friendly refrigerants

FMCG company Hindustan Unilever Ltd on Tuesday said it is already rolling out environment-friendly hydrocarbon refrigerants in India to help reduce hydrofluorocarbons (HFC) emissions.

"We are already rolling out environment-friendly freezer cabinets that use hydrocarbon (HC) refrigerants," the company said in a statement.

Hindustan Unilver also sought to refute the Environmental Investigation Agency's (EIA) September 16 report "Transitioning HFCs in India: The opportunity for climate-friendly cooling in the fast food industry" which held rapidly growing multinational fast food chains in India as the largest contributors to HFC emissions.

The report said these could add the "equivalent of nearly one million tonnes of carbon emissions by 2020" and named US-based McDonald's, Starbucks, Subway and Dunkin Donuts as well as India-based company Cafe Coffee Day and "Britain-based Hindustan Unilever" as major contributors of HFC emissions.

"In fact, there are currently more than 43,000 freezers with HC technology in our fleet in India," it said.

"Our HC freezers cover more than 90 percent of our retail freezers in India and we will be phasing out HFC freezers completely," the statement quoted the company's Sustainable Business and Communications head Prasad Pradhan as saying.

It also clarified that Hindustan Unilever is based in India and not in Britain and is a subsidiary of Unilever.

--IANS

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