Chain Retailers In A Race To Build Green Outlets

In new Wal-Mart stores, the baseboards and moldings are made of plastic left over from diaper manufacturing. Chipotle, the burrito chain, has installed an energy-producing wind turbine outside a new store in the Chicago suburbs. And a Florida chain called Pizza Fusion reuses the draft from its ovens to heat water.

Across the country, a race is under way among stores and fast-food restaurants to build environmentally friendly outlets, as a way to curry favor with consumers and to lower operating costs. Most chains are focusing on prototypes at the moment, but the trend could eventually change the look and function of thousands of stores.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[Skylineturbine]

Put a wind turbine up! We are just grateful from any business taking alternative energy serious. It takes time to shift from consumption to contribution. Concern for the environment, good citizenship, and profits are not mutually exclusive. We say cheers to anyone willing help the paradigm shift.

[jsarets]

Restaurants and supermarkets have a high potential for efficiency improvements for several reasons, one being that they do lots of simultaneous heating and cooling, cooking and refrigerating. Using heat pumps, thermal energy rejected from cooling and/or refrigeration processes can be delivered to heating and/or cooking processes, avoiding the unnecessary creation of new heat.

Another item is that most supermarkets have lots of open refrigerator cases (and sometimes even open freezer cases). Installing automatically-closing doors on these cases would save a huge amount of compressor energy currently wasted through unfettered convection to the ambient environment.

[MyTake]

All they need to do is to purchase a 200 kilowatt hydrogen fuel cell electrical generator and run their operations with it.

They could actually supply their customers with clean perfect water that is the by-product of a hydrogen fuel cell generator as this enterprising India Oil Company is now going to do: http://www.cleantech.com/news/3792/indian-refiner-bottle-water-fuel-cell-plant .

[jsarets]

Yeah, and they could get hydrogen from the magic hydrogen fairy.

Hydrogen is produced from electricity and produces electricity -- about 10-20% as much as went into the process at the beginning. It's a transmission medium, not an energy source, and not nearly efficient as its direct competition: the electric grid.

Even if they did decide to use a renewable source such as rooftop solar, it would still be unwise to follow your logic. If you don't first reduce loads and then increase efficiency, then you'll be spending too much money on an oversized PV array.

[1rewd1]

Gee, what a novel concept.

My pet peeve? Parking lot lighting that is, on average, six times brighter than it needs to be in order to provide a safe environment. A person could perform brain surgery under most of the night time environments.

Why do they do it? To be the "brightest" guy on the block or along the interstate ... for the attention.

I live in a pretty rural area. We just had a BK open next to a cemetery. Eternal rest under eternal daylight?

It will be argued that these newer lights are more energy efficient than their ancestors, and hooray for that, but at the same time how about cutting down on the number used, give the electric grid a break, give the environment a breakl and spare the neighbors excessive light pollution?

[KillTheMessenger]

It's not just the parking lots. Indoors lighting is way too bright, too. It's a remnant of decade old studies which showed that people are buying more in brighter lit sales rooms and the industry believes in it like a religious dogma.

[1rewd1]

Make the sales aisle brighter so we can buy the mandated energy efficient light bulbs ...

[mindylovesobama]

I bought a hamburger that was green just the other week.

[KarateKid]

Now, if McDonald's would only improve the quality of their crappy, fat filled food.

[jacqmac]

Gee! Ain't it WONDERFUL that Wal-Mart is 'going green'? I wonder if this new found 'responsibility' will still be so loudly trumpeted when the EMPLOYEES demand better wages, healthcare and working conditions? I wonder what will happen when these same EMPLOYEES UNIONIZE!!! Same goes for Mickey D's. Kudos to Marion Nestle for holding up the mirror to the Emporer--he STILL doesn't have any CLOTHES on!!

[KillTheMessenger]

All of these are purely cosmetic measures to paint consumerism in a "greener" light. The underlying problem, that two thirds of the US economy are based on mostly empty consumption habits, can not be addressed by writing "This store is green" on facades. Although, green washing sounds like a very American "approach" to a real problem.

[Hoosierone]

Absolutely right. What would be truly green is to not drive to the store and buy junk that you don't need , even if the packaging claims to be recyclable. A fast food joint wants to call itself green, so it abandons the old store, takes another piece of our planet's limited surface, builds roads through the forest so motorcars can get there, and buys all kinds of new equipment that worked perfectly well in the old store. Yeah it's green because the windows don't leak heat as fast.

[alvdh1]

Mr. Killthemessanger, why don't you turn down your thermostat, light a candle and go some place else.

[KillTheMessenger]

I did turn down my thermostat. I am taking the bus and the train. I am driving a Prius. I am turning my computers off at work. My office lights are running on half power and I have put up signs all over the company asking people to conserve energy. And, believe it or not, some do.

And with all that I am fully aware that I have not been able to to more than 10% of what needs to be done and that much more radical steps are needed.

But thanks for telling us that your main desire is to have everyone with a realistic perspective leave the country so that you don't have to listen to the truth any longer.

[Tom95134]

Wal-Mart, instead of making the baseboards and moldings from plastic left over from diaper manufacturing, would do a better service to America if it would stop buying it's products from China and start doing something to restore the manufacturing to the United States that it forced out of the country.

>>> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/

WATCH IT!!

[MyTake]

Excellent point.