Objective. The purpose of this research is to compute the CO₂ emissions during the sales process of foods, and to offer information convenient for consumers. Using operating data offered by 8 stores, we calculated the CO₂ emissions for each food and store from electricity and gas use, waste disposal, plastic tray production, resource waste material recycling, customer automobile use, and the amount of recyclable waste collected from customers.
Results and Discussion. The main CO₂ emission factors during the sales process of goods are supermarket electricity and gas use and customer automobile use. The amounts depend on the characteristics of the store in which the foods are sold, for example, the area of the store, the sales numbers per unit area, the distance from the store to the closest station, the percentage of customers from surrounding neighborhoods, average customer spend, age-group of main customers. At present the CO₂ reduction effect by recycling of resource waste material is relatively small. According to our simulation analysis, electricity and gas-saving measures through energy management contributes greatly to the reduction of CO₂ emitted during the sales process of goods.
Conclusions. To reduce CO₂ emission during sales process, it is important for the store to take measures to reduce consumption of both electricity and gas, and to control the extent of customer automobile usage. If consumers know CO₂ emission factors as well as stores' managers, they can understand what they must do. It's desirable to make the information of CO₂ emissions during the sales process as best we are able. This paper shows an example of such information. This research clearly shows that the operating data companies collect daily can be very useful in calculating CO₂ emitted during the sales process of goods.