Am I the only one who seems to get upset at the massive open-air refrigerators in grocery stores?

My local council introduced a scheme to reduce the use of plastic bags, called “bagbusters” in the neighbourhood, for obvious reasons, and you can read the press release by downloading the PDF from their site. But to me it seems a complete waste of time in comparison to what else is happening in the grocery environment. I feel like it is battling only a small part of the energy waste and a small, token gesture. There is a far greater environmental impact from the chill fridges in most supermarkets.

For example, my local Franklins, in Newtown, has a 30 metre fridge along the entire side and back of the shop, and it blasts very cold air into the entire aisle so that even if I am buying coffee, I get a frozen backside by the time I’ve made my choice. From meats, through dairy and pasta to fresh juices and milk. It is a 30M x 2M fridge pumping very cold air into the entire store, needlessly.

The thing is, I recall when I was younger, back in the dark ages of the 70’s, grocery store fridges used to have these heavy plastic strips you could see and reach through, that conserved the cold in the fridge space to some degree, and the breeze of passing shoppers would not warm the refrigerated atmosphere enough to require massive amounts of energy.

But groceries with entire walls of refridgeration, pumping very cold air into the general shopping space are wasting energy, for no good reason, and with no significant conservation of time or effort for the shoppers. It does not take time to hold a door or barrier aside to reach for the steaks you like, or your yoghurt pot of choice.

It is both a near-criminal waste of energy (think: leaving the doors and windows open when your air-con is on) as well as an obvious waste of money, not to mention causing me to wear a coat just to do my groceries! And surely we already know what the excessive use of energy means to both the environment as well as the already stretched power-grid.

What do YOU think? Is it worth a complaint or am I just a whingeing old fart? …grumbling in the cheese section.