Wal-Mart Canada’s First Environmental Demonstration Store

Wal-mart Canada opens its first Environmental Demonstration Store in Burlington Ontario in 2009.

These are some highlighted features:

• demonstration of geothermal heating and cooling technology in a large-scale Canadian retail operation – facilitated by 15 km of piping buried under parking lot ->> i love geothermal heat pumps…  i have one before moving back to Vancouver!  see more here. It’s pretty crazy to have 15km of pipes.  i’ll do a little RETScreen study on it, i’m pretty sure even with this much piping there is not enough heating/cooling for the entire store… 
• Daylight harvesting system using skylights to refract daylight throughout the store; light sensors monitor the amount of natural light available and rise, dim or turn off lighting as needed 
• bought green power from Bullfrog Power ->> yes, buy our selves to sustainability!
• In-floor radiant heating and cooling system circulates water to transfer heat and cold instead of air vents
• Environmentally preferable CO2 refrigeration system ->> i wonder what is Wal-mart’s cooling/heating load!
• Heat from refrigeration system captured and reused to heat store
• Energy-saving motion-activated LED lights in refrigerator and freezer cases reduces energy use ->> these are AWESOME…  best for kids running across the whole freezer case hall and light everything up!
• Low-wattage parking lot lights as well as LED external signs reduce energy use
• White roof membrane deflects sunlight by an estimated 85 per cent  ->> this supposely reduce heat island effect…  and lowers cooling cost!
• Increased insulation on the roof reduces heat and cooling loss

There are some more features that you can see in this article.  It looks like it’s build to LEED standard by reading these features…. There is no LEED for retail (yet) and maybe that’s why they have not decided to go for LEED… who knows.  it also costs money to be LEED certified!

Green Wal-mart!

I wanted to read more about Wal-mart’s sustainable 360 campaign, but I’m out of time today…..  

I did find this cartoon - Wal-mart the new tree hugger…..  

Walmart’s sustainable policy - big company, big impact

Do you shop at Wal-Mart?  I’m not a big fan but I have been to Wal-Mart numerous times when we used to live in Kingston, Ontario.  It’s a typical big box store similar to the Canadian Superstore without veggies (although the new Walmart Super Centres have veggies), Zellers with less clothing, Home Depot with less building material.  Really, it sells everything, and it sells for cheaper.  Despite all the negative news (like the Walrmart movie) relating to Wal-Mart in basically every aspect, I have to admit that a super large company like Wal-Mart, when it decides to catch the sustainable fad, is really effective.  They call it “Sustainable 360“.  

Some quick stats:

• Every week 176 million customers shop our stores in 16 countries around this world;
• over 7,800 Wal-Mart stores and Sam’s Club; and
• employ more than 2 million associates.

Not hard to see why when they implement a policy, the impact is quite significant!  This week I will go through their sustainable newsletters, sustainable fact sheets, and research some news about their carbon footprint… stay tuned.  

some quick food for thoughts with their sustainable measures:

• In 2008, Wal-Mart was able to reach its goal to improve the efficiency of its fleet by 25 percent by loading trucks more efficiently, working with suppliers to reduce packaging, creating better driving routes that reduce miles and adding fuel-saving technologies to the truck.  
  • In a single year, this change could eliminate approximately 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, reduce the use of 10 million gallons of diesel fuel and save the company an estimated $25 million per year.
• In May 2008, Wal-Mart reached its goal to sell only concentrated liquid laundry detergent in all of its U.S. stores and Sam’s Club locations. President and CEO Lee Scott made this commitment at the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative.
  • it is expected to save, over a three-year period, more than 400 million gallons of water, more than 95 million pounds of plastic resin and more than 125 million pounds of cardboard.  For water alone, this is the equivalent of 100 million individual showers.

Pretty impressive in my view - we really need some big companies to get their act together to make big impacts like this!  What do you think?

Hybrid system of carbon tax and cap and trade the best

With the BC provincial election approaching, I’m a bit surprised that we haven’t heard too much about the BC carbon tax lately. I do a quick news search every day or two on Google and I hardly see anything interesting about the BC carbon tax.  Today I found Clark Williams-Derry (director of Sightline Institute) of Seattle, who wrote this commentary published on the current issue of Georgia Straight discussing that the hybrid system of carbon tax plus a cap and trade system is the best solution. 

A hybrid system—a tax plus a cap—would provide some predictability about prices, as well as a firm guarantee that we’ll meet our climate goals. The tax keeps the system moving forward, continually improving our performance. And the cap is like a sturdy guardrail that keeps us on the road to success, making sure that we make steady, secure progress in creating a climate-friendly economy.

This makes sense and this hybrid system will exactly be the system that BC is going to have!  The carbon tax will always be around, and the cap and trade system will come in to get the carbon that is not taxed, typically from process fuel from large emitters. 

I’m excited about seeing how this hybrid system will work in BC, and i have no doubt that it will. 

If you’re a carbon tax or a carbon cap and trade system supporter, are you in for a hybrid system?

Green Index (grndx) by the Treehugger

I Came across the green index (grndx) that was prepared by the Treehunger and people from Daylife.  It’s a ranking tool that tracks mentions of certain key green phrases in the media.  It compares to the numbers tracked in the previous week and have an indicator showing whether the key green phrase has gained or lose ground in the media.  

I thought it’s fun, for sure!  I’m not sure how extensive the tracking strategy is, but i wouldn’t be suprised if the number per week jumps up to tens of thousands if it had included blogs or international news media.  Perhaps it can be combined with Google alert??

Guess what’s the highest 3 ranked terminologies this week?

1. solar
2. climate change
3. gloal warming