Every day, thousands of trucks traverse our cities, delivering the perishable goods we rely on, from fresh vegetables to frozen dinners. However, there’s a dirty secret hiding behind this essential service: the diesel engines that keep these deliveries cool.
Transport Refrigeration Units (TRUs) are the unsung workhorses of the supply chain, responsible for keeping our food fresh during transport, but also silently poisoning the air we breathe. While we’ve made significant strides in reducing emissions from the trucks themselves, with the adoption of cleaner Euro VI. Yet, many of these cleaner modern vehicles are still hauling around outdated, heavily polluting diesel-powered refrigeration units.
The majority of TRUs in operation today are powered by ageing diesel engines, which emit alarming levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matter (PM) – up to 16 and 40 times more than the trucks they’re attached to. A single TRU can also emit between 12 tonnes of CO2 annually. This is, in part, why 2-4% of the UK’s total GHG emission is associated with food refrigeration. The truth is that these often unseen bits of tech, so crucial to how we buy our groceries or get our medicine, are having a big impact on air quality and public health in our urban areas.
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