Tesco Rhuthun Expands

Nearly two years after a planning inspector overturned Denbighshire county council’s refusal to let Tesco Rhuthun expand, last week saw the start of an extension at Rhuthun’s store.

Well, an extension would be an exaggeration. Tesco is, in fact, installing a so-called “environmental lobby” at the entrance to its store. Behind the white boards, workers began digging up the brick pavings.

This may not be the expansion that Tesco originally asked for (and regular readers will recall requested before the store was even completed). And, strictly speaking, the lobby is within rather than without.

If the term “environmental lobby” suggests that Tesco has joined Greenpeace in militantly pressuring the government to do more for our surroundings, things are actually more prosaic. Tesco got their environmental dictionary out to tell us that the lobby would improve the store’s “thermal efficiency” (translated, using less energy to heat the store) and to reduce its “carbon footprint” (translated, by belting out less carbon dioxide waste gases in the process).

In this case, perhaps every little actually *does* help.