Those big box stores are built SO cheaply that they probably won't be around any longer than they are economically viable. The corrugated roofs and ceilings will be hauled away for scrap metal and the shells will fall over in a couple of years. The pavement is partly tar, some day we'll be ripping it up and burning it to keep warm.

What is greener: Driving to one big box store, or dozens of smaller stores scattered all over multiple parts of town and multiple towns, only to find out they are a tiny store with no stock left of the item you wanted?

I'm not defending them, I'm not really a fan of big box stores (I can't stand crowds), but you should really think through what you are posting.

I'm not sure that's necessarilly the case. Keeping transportation of products from major transit hubs to other major transit hubs makes a lot of sense. If we move from our current big box store centers to lots of decentralized neighborhood stores, we're going to have to truck goods through neighborhoods, creating a whole host of new problems.

The problem with Big Box Retailing right now is that it's not walkable. We need to invert the current plan. Push the bigboxes right up to the curb, put stores back to back, and then put the parking inside a ring of bigbox stores. We can then easily get mass transit to the stores.

I think without major trustbusting in the United States anything else is simply not possible. Walmart is never going to agree to open 100 small stores in a community rather than 4 large ones. If we could get Walmart to make those 4 large stores convenient to 25% of the community by walking or bike, and convenient to the other 75% by public transporation then I think we'd have a real start on a green bigbox.

While there is no doubt that the US retail penchant for more, more, more is unhealthy, some of the comparison with other countries must be put in context. Most countries outside the US were developed in a bi-polar fashion - with dense urban cities and wide-open rural landscapes and towns.

The US, on the other hand, to some degree thanks to the car and oil companies, developed a third, now predominant category - suburbs. Suburbs more or less required their residents to hop in cars to shop, and Big Box stores were the natural capitalistic evolutionary result. If people were already in their cars, why not build one HUGE store with everything they need (like Meijer's Thrifty Acres, Costco, Wal-Mart, etc.).

I have no argument with the fact that BIG BOX stores and a car-centric economy is bad for the environment and bad for our communities, but I think we need to look to community planning and development regulations as much as we look to individual stores or chains for the solution.

I'm with brandon on this one

Brandon et al: what is greener is a conventional main street with a bunch of stores in a line that can be walked to; what is greener is buying a week's worth of groceries instead of a month's, what is greener is not having built an infrastructure that requires everyone to drive everywhere.

The solution to the problem as you phrase it already exists: it's called a mall. If a big box is out of something, they have to order it, just like a 20' wide storefront on main street would. The difference is that a giant company can afford to maintain a massive inventory in every store, whereas a smaller, greener shop cannot.

We're seeing the same problems here as with the Chinese toy recalls: convenience has a price, and not necessarily an obvious hit to the wallet. In other words, what Joshua said.

Check this out:

1. The Home Depot owns more Acres in north america than any other Big Box company.

2. Big box companies, like Best Buy and Walmart own more Acres than ANYBODY else.

If those Big Box acres are LEED certified then....

3. LEED certified acres will be a majority and not the exception!!!

Cool!!!!

I hate big box stores.They have no idea what customer service is.My local stores ( mom and pop stores ) are walkable from my work.The 5.15 an hour college student ( walmart employee ) could not find the toilet parts isle.At least in the small shops people know where things are.And can help while being knowable.They may even have a better way to fix it.

yes all the big box retailers will have eco friendly stores in the future and we will all have eco friendly cars, but this will
not solve our traffic and road problems, and big box retailers do not create a sense of community because everyone is enclosed in their cars.

Its possible to build stores for the human scale that are pedestrian friendly and mixed use. The solution would be to build more stores but have them be smaller, but the big box stores are used to their big cookie cutter designs...

Boris

If I see another freaking Walmart get put up I'll scream. Drive 15 miles around this area, you'll see about 8 Walmarts, parked across the street from or right beside a Home Depot, where down the road there is a Lowes. Freaking sickening. I really hope that these buildings are built cheaply and one of these hurricans that passes through will rid of us such an unsightly building and gathering spot for society's finest.

Aside from the physical locations, I am pretty frustrated that Big Box electronic retailers don't have e-waste recycling programs. I actually just finished calling both the Best Buy and the Radioshack in my neighborhood, and neither will take my old CRT and laptop for recycling. Week after week the adds are on television proselytizing us to come in and get the latest/greatest in technology, and yet there is no mention about what I am suppose to do with the older stuff. So if they can't even get that right it seems a little like greenwash.