Wal-Mart Opens Green Supercenter in Texas
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 07.23.05
We at TreeHugger admit to posting more than our fair share of wind turbine photos lately. This one deserves special notice, however, as it is part of the experimental Wal-mart Supercenter store that just opened in McKinney, Texas. The experimental design elements include a nice menu of resource saving (cost cutting of course) measures. Some naturalizing is included. From the press release: "Wal-Mart has contracted with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to provide testing and analysis on store systems and materials, based on national scientific measurements and standards, for a period of three years". Having a good data set to back design change arguments is critical and we're glad to see it covered. This project takes it to the next level however. More below the fold.
The most impressive thing in the press release is this statement. "Sharing the results of the store’s experiments with the rest of the retail and development industry could turn low-volume, rare technologies into industry standards. Wal-Mart hopes to learn new environmental conservation best management practices and benchmarks that will serve as future design standards in the retail industry when it comes to land development and building construction".
TreeHugger suggests you have a look at the photos that are a free download with the press kit.
A startup green design or retail outfit will never have enough capital to do this kind of experimentation and study. Nor will it have the brand recognition to get mainstream media attention for a building project. That's why its so important that the big players get involved in driving change, opening public dialog on the work to keep credibilty up. Eventually we might see small strip mall developers become influenced by these ideas. To spread them far and wide, we need zoning code changes that codify the basics and leave enough flexibility for green dreamers to come up with their own design variants.
What's next we wonder? Maybe our earlier speculations about organic clothing lines or even local produce coming to the big chains had more plausibility than we thought.
Wal-Mart has built 3 eco Wal-Mart stores since 1991. The first of which was in Lawrence, KS, and eco-hero Bill McDonough had a hand in designing this. A summary is below which I pulled from www.cool-companies.org/profits. As you can see there have been obvious financial benefits in these three stores and I have to applaud Wal-Mart for having the courage to try something "risky" like this. One has to wonder, though, with Wal-Mart opening an average of a store per day in the US (according to their website), why have only three since 1991, been eco Wal-Marts?
"The Wal-Mart store in City of Industry, California, uses half the energy of a typical new California store, thanks to advanced lighting and efficient, downsized climate control system. In place of ordinary opaque roofing, the store has an 18-kilowatt solar photovoltaic canopy. Annual energy savings are estimated at $75,000 to $80,000, which means a three-year payback of the added cost of the equipment. Southern California Edison, the local utility, provided a $170,000 incentive that shortened payback to less than one year. But rewards are much greater than that: Wal-Mart's decision to use skylights was sparked by the stunning success of its "Eco-Mart" store in Lawrence, Kansas. In a cost-cutting move, the company installed specially- designed skylights over just half the store, leaving the other side without daylighting. Managers using Wal-Mart's famous real-time inventory system quickly found that sales per square foot were significantly higher in the daylit half of the store, and higher than the same departments in other stores."
What seems to distinguish the one from previous efforts is the diverse set of design changes and the concept of sharing the benefits.
The number of low impact development techniques and green features they're using on this building is more than impressive! Everyone should check out that press kit link above!
Now all they have to do is reduce those 12,000 mile long supply chains by about 11,980 miles.
Wow, Walmart, the worst corporation in the world, making a switch to green? And its in Texas??? Maybe there is hope!
I live in Lawrence, KS. They are expanding the Walmart into a Supercenter. I am curious if they are still sticking with sustainable designs and the original guidelines that McDonough had set in place in 1993.