Going Green for selfish reasons

On a brisk Friday afternoon last month, workers at a newly built Mountain Equipment Co-op store in Burlington, Ont., gently lowered a 14-ton solar array onto the building’s roof. Once fully up and running, the photovoltaic and thermal panels will generate 30 per cent of the store’s energy needs, while heating the building and its water. The crew had already installed skylights along the full length of the building to allow in natural light, and the store was outfitted with motion detectors so that lights can automatically be dimmed when no one is in a room. What’s more, the building will capture rainwater to be used in its gardens and toilets, cutting water consumption in half. In short, this isn’t your typical big box retail store. “There’s nothing like it in Canada,” says Gary Faryon, the Vancouver-based company’s senior manager of operations.

Some would say those are just the sort of eco-friendly initiatives you’d expect from a company that gives grants to environmental causes and has a customer base consisting largely of tree huggers. Yet, while MEC may have a particular emphasis on sustainability, a closer look at the larger retail industry reveals that a sea change is under way. It’s not just the so-called progressive companies that are going green—retailers such as Wal-Mart, long pilloried by environmentalists for enormous stores in far-flung suburbs and smog-spewing factories in China, are emerging to lead the pack. Yes, it’s partly because they’re looking to burnish their reputations with customers and they’ve suddenly discovered the colour green in their marketing materials. But there’s more to it than that. For many, the prime motivation isn’t boosting their green aura, it’s the dramatic improvement to the bottom line. “There are a lot of reasons to green your business, and a lot of pressure out there to do it,” says Andrew Winston, the author of Green to Gold, and an environmental consultant. “But those retailers that are going green have found they’ve been able to reduce their risks, as well as their costs.”

The past few months have seen a flurry of energy-saving announcements from North American retailers designed to help the environment while saving cash. In October, Best Buy said it would slash greenhouse gas emissions by turning to renewable energy sources such as solar for some stores, while installing a centralized system to track energy spikes across its stores and distribution centres. The electronics retailer predicts the initiatives will reduce CO2 emissions by eight per cent per square foot by 2012, while saving on energy costs. Other companies such as Kohl’s, Safeway and JCPenney have also begun to outfit their rooftops with solar panels in a bid to save on energy.

Such high-tech initiatives get headlines, but many retailers are finding that the solutions that save them the most money are decidedly low-tech, or as Winston calls them, “head-slappers.” For instance, earlier this year Home Depot announced that it would switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs in its in-store light fixture displays, and stand to save US$16 million a year by doing so. Wal-Mart is rethinking the frozen food aisle by installing motion detectors in some fridges and freezers that will turn off the lights when no one’s around. Such measures could add up to significant reductions in greenhouse gases. Climate Leaders, a group of 226 U.S. corporations that includes many of the biggest names in retail, has vowed to reduce emissions by the equivalent of nine million cars annually. The cost savings could potentially add up to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Back before green became the new black, some retailers were already finding that reducing their energy consumption made economic sense. In the late 1990s John Stanton wanted to find ways to cut down on overhead at his burgeoning chain of Running Room stores. He struck upon the idea of doing away with conventional spot lamps and replacing them with energy-efficient reflector lamps. The savings were immediately obvious. “In one store we were able to reduce our energy in one month by the amount it would take to run an 18-cubic-foot refrigerator for 2½ years,” says the founder and CEO of the Edmonton-based athletic chain. “It pays to do it, and from a footprint standpoint it also helps.”