Practices to Improve the Sustainability of Australian Cold Storage Facilities

Abstract

With the ever-increasing threat of climate change and global warming, ways to make energy intensive buildings, such as cold storage warehouses essential for food preservation, more sustainable need to be found. Some refrigerated warehouse owners may be unaware or unsure of the benefits obtainable from implementing sustainable practices and technologies. To search for innovations that could inform the owners and managers of cold storage warehouses about how to enhance their sustainability, convergent interviewing of subject matter experts was conducted. The resulting practices and processes were organized into a hierarchy that ranged from essential to best practices that can be implemented to improve the sustainability of refrigerated warehouses. Examples of these practices and technologies include ideal refrigeration systems, racking methods, and insulation types. To encourage the use of sustainable practices and technologies, more reporting on successful or unsuccessful applications of practices and technologies needs to be communicated. Applying change diagnostic tools such as convergent interviewing enables a practical and industry focused set of outcomes to be determined that can help drive change towards more sustainable cold storage warehouses in Australia.