Wal-Mart’s new experimenal store, located near Dallas, Texas, offers the usual line-up of products and will employ about 450 people. What is unusual according to the company is, “the new experimental store could profoundly change the way the retail industry designs, constructs, and manages facilities as it relates is unusual is, according to to the environment.”
The design incorporates a wide variety of green building features including efficiency, wind and solar power, water conservation and recycling efforts.
“We see it as a next step in evaluating the impact we leave on the environment as we look toward smart growth and sustainability in the building of our new stores,” said Mike Duke, executive vice president and chief executive officer of Wal-Mart Stores – USA. “This store will contain many of the best resource conservation and sustainable design technologies currently available to minimize the use of energy and natural resources.”
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.
When customers enter the parking lot they will be greeted by Bergey Windpower’s newest turbine – a 150 foot tall 50 kW wind turbine that operates in wind speeds as low as 5 miles per hour.
Althought the solar component is small, it will be noticeable by customers. 7500 square feet of solar panels totalling 59 kW, cover the garden center, the curtain wall, and the entry vestibules. Supplied by RWE SCHOTT Solar, they will provide over 48,000 kilowatt hours of energy annually, enough energy to power 1,500 homes for a day a year.
The McKinney store incorporates crystalline and thin-film panels. While crystalline panels offer a higher energy return, thin-film panels like can be integrated into walls and ceilings.
In terms of energy efficiency, simply adding glass doors to refrigerated display cases reduce energy use by 600,000 kWh.
A grid of white fabric ductwork – “Duct Sox” – is suspended 11 feet above the floor, making it necessary to heat and cool only the area below it. Black tubing around the frozen food sections recycles the hot air generated by the refrigerators.
Water conservation methods inlude urinals with no flush handles, xeriscaping, and a wildflower meadow. A “bioswale” behind the store is a channel of rocks, shrubs and grasses that trap pollutants and cleanse runoff from the parking lot (which is made from pervious materials).
The cleaner water is then pumped using wind energy back through an irrigation system that waters the trees and shrubbery around the store.
In a side room near the auto repair dock is a large storage tank that holds the used cooking oil from fried chicken made in the deli section. In winter that will be mixed with motor oil extracted during oil changes and used to heat the store.
Other features include composting food waste, combining fly ash in the concrete, using low and no-VOC paints, adhesives and sealers, and recycling the construction materials used to build the store.
Environmental groups have long-opposed Wal-Mart’s rapid expansion, covering thousands of acres of green space with concrete with its hundreds of new store openings a year. Wal-Mart hopes this store will placate critics as well as save money.
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