Successful retailers are driven by their markets and responsive to the needs of their customers. As our society has become more environmentally conscious, and concerned about healthy lifestyles, retailers have responded by offering new products, and changing the way their stores are designed, built, and operated. Like other buildings, stores can reduce their environmental impact by careful siting, improving waste reduction, the efficient use of energy and water, and natural resource conservation.

Paul Hawken, the environmental guru of “green” business, and author of The Ecology of Commerce, was, after all, a garden tool catalog retailer. Smith & Hawken and The Body Shop were among the first retailers to embrace the concept of sustainability, and consider all aspects of their business, from their product selections to how they designed their stores and treated their employees. While there are encouraging signs that retailers are starting to get on the green bandwagon, there is still much room for improvement.

Recent pronouncements by Wal-Mart’s CEO Lee Scott seem to indicate that the world’s largest retailer has turned over a new, green leaf. He has set ambitious, long-term goals for the company: to be supplied by 100% renewable energy, to create zero waste, and to sell products that sustain natural resources and natural habitat.

Wal-Mart has embarked on a self-described “journey” to sustainability. Andy Ruben, the company’s Vice President for Sustainability, described Wal-Mart’s systematic improvements in the supply chain at a recent meeting in Boston.

While in the past they had focused on low cost, and rewarded suppliers for quality, they are now adding natural resource criteria to their purchasing. Their buyers are pushing for laundry soap in smaller bottles, reduced cardboard in packaging, fish caught with less by-catch, and organic cotton. They are working with one supplier to take their baled film plastic and recycle it into tables. After years of taking the position that “we’re just a retailer… leave us alone,” Ruben recounted that their eyes have been opened to the need to reduce their site development impacts, conserve energy, and consider more closely the products that they sell.

A recent Wal-Mart advertisement in the New York Times said that “Every company has a responsibility to reduce greenhouse gases as quickly as possible.” Wal-Mart has prohibited its trucks from idling and instead has installed auxiliary power units with small diesel engines to run the heating and cooling of their truck cabs. They estimate that they will save 10 million gallons of fuel annually, save $25 million in fuel costs, and keep 100 million metric tons of carbon out of the atmosphere.

To do their part, Whole Foods Supermarkets, a leading retailer of natural and organic foods, has committed to buying 100% of its electricity from wind-power, and a number of retailers, particularly in California, are installing solar panels on their roofs.

This is indicative of a growing awareness among retailers about what they sell, as well as how and where they sell. For example, in addition to careful selection of environmentally appropriate building materials, salon and cosmetics retailer Aveda has an all-natural focus to their products. Many coffee retailers have moved to “Fair Trade” coffee, produced without exploiting the growers or damaging the environment. Organically grown food has been the fastest growing product sector for the past several years, and large grocers such as the Stop and Shop Supermarket chain have developed their own organic private label. Retailers have started pushing suppliers to reduce unnecessary packaging, to reduce the waste that both they and their customers have to deal with.

Beyond just individual stores, a number of shopping centers around the country are seeking to showcase their “greenness.”

Former President Bill Clinton served as the keynote speaker to officially open the 2006 edition of the International Council of Shopping Centers’ (ICSC) annual spring convention last month.

He keyed in on energy as a catalyst for this sort of change, which could have an especially strong impact on the shopping center industry, pointing out that a more efficient energy environment will lead to higher wages, giving shopping center owners better consumers. Specifically, he pointed to the potential positive impact of creating a more energy independent and cleaner U.S. energy economy, which could help stem the tide in global warming and our reliance on foreign oil.

“This is not rocket science,” Clinton said. “You can lead the way. You should make sure every building you build should get a LEED award,” referring to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design® designation that is part of the Green Building Rating System administered by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Fairlane Green, a shopping center in Allen Park, Michigan, is seeking LEED certification for all of the retailers in the complex through a combination of LEED-NC (new construction), LEED-CS (core and shell), and LEED-CI (commercial interiors).

Built atop a former Ford Motor Company landfill and thereby illustrating the reuse of a former industrial site, the sustainability benefits include stormwater treatment through a series of constructed wetlands before it flows to the Detroit River. The Target store on the site captures rainwater from its rooftop in a cistern to reduce potable water use, and excess water is diverted to a rain garden along the façade of the building. Target has incorporated sustainable design features into its stores for many years, including white roofing to reduce the heat island effect, and polished concrete to eliminate unnecessary flooring material.

The Natick Mall in Massachusetts is an older-style retail development that is undergoing a face-lift. Residential units are being added above the retail to create a mixed-use community. Lifestyle centers are emerging all over the country; mixed-use developments that recreate villages and the feel of small town Main Streets. Multiple uses sharing the same parking and other infrastructure reduces the impact of the built environment. Mixed-use developments, particularly if located near public transportation, tend to have a pedestrian focus, and can reduce automobile use.

One recent study showed that over half of retail sales take place in shopping centers, and over half of shopping center space is taken by the major retailers. So helping major, national retail chains reduce their environmental impact can result in some significant improvement. For this reason, the US Green Building Council has been working to develop an Application Guide for Retail (AGR). The Guide will interpret and amplify the green building standards for new construction (LEED-NC) and commercial interiors (LEED-CI) to make them more relevant for retailers.

The LEED-NC AGR has been developed to specifically address the unique challenges and opportunities of implementing green building strategies into retail projects by providing tailored credit language and alternative compliance paths as needed. A number of leading retailers have participated in the Application Guide for Retail Committee, including Home Depot, Target, Starbucks, Aveda, Bank of America, PNC Bank, Chipolte, and Monical’s Pizza.

Interestingly, the AGR Committee chose to go beyond the USGBC standard criteria and make the retail standard more restrictive by adding process electrical loads (from refrigeration, ovens, etc) and process water loads to the reduction requirements. The Application Guide for Retail also required a more detailed waste stream analysis for recycling than the LEED NC standard.

That same study concluded that the retail industry contributes around 18% of the total commercial and industrial waste stream, with a resource recovery rate of only 28%. By weight, 60% of the majority of retail waste is cardboard/paper and organics. . Plastics, glass and metals comprise approximately 13% of shopping center wastes, with around 4% of the waste comprised of recyclable plastic. Although a relatively small proportion of waste by weight, plastic can represent up to 23% of mall waste by volume.

Due to the significance of waste generated by retail, the AGR Committee required that retailers do a waste audit to evaluate their particular waste stream and to determine a means to recycle as much of that waste as possible.

The Application Guide for Retail Committee recently announced a call for projects to participate in pilot testing the LEED-NC Guide. The pilot test of the LEED-NC AGR is intended to gather market feedback on the applicability of these draft modifications to the LEED-NC v2.1/2.2 prerequisites and credits to green retail projects. Upon completion of the pilot test phase, the LEED-NC AGR will be revised as required and balloted per USGBC policies and procedures.

The goal of pilot testing of LEED Rating Systems is to gather market feedback on key aspects of LEED credits and prerequisites. LEED credits are designed to be objective, clear, concise and verifiable. While the Application Guide for Retail Committee has put forth an exceptional effort to craft credits that meet these requirements and motivate integration of green strategies into retail projects, real world project experience is necessary to verify appropriateness and effectiveness of the draft credit requirements. USGBC is currently seeking diverse retail projects to pilot test the LEED-NC AGR over the next 6-9 months.

Pilot projects will be selected based on the following criteria:
• Potential to contribute to the pilot knowledge by virtue of:
• Number of projects an organization commits to
• Project size
• Regional location
• Compatibility of the applicant’s schedule with the pilot timeline
• Opportunities provided by the project to showcase LEED-NC Application Guide for Retail
• USGBC membership status

Projects chosen to pilot test the LEED-NC Application Guide for Retail are expected to actively participate in regular teleconferences with staff and consultants. In addition, participating project teams will be required to respond to brief technical questionnaires during the course of the pilot test. Regular communication with project teams is intended to capture feedback and record lessons learned from the use of the Application Guide to guide subsequent refinements.

In the old days, we didn’t think much about climate change or carbon emissions; refrigerated cases had interior lights to show off the wares inside. When electricity was cheap, it was okay to chill burning light bulbs. Today’s more energy efficient solution is to use light-emitting diodes (or LEDs) to put the light into the refrigerated case, but keep the heat source outside the unit. Stores are installing clear plastic curtains instead of doors on refrigerated cases to save energy costs. What seems like common sense approaches today requires a change in the mindset away from how we approached things in the past. Being responsive to the desires of their customers, in this more environmentally conscious time, helps retailers to sell their products, while saving the earth.  SLDT