April 30, 2012  

Dear Clients, Friends and Colleagues,

I recently attended Walmart's 6th (my 4th) Annual Sustainable Facilities Summit just outside their corporate headquarters in Bentonville, AR. As many of you know, Walmart has been a leader across industry lines in greening its built environment, not to mention its fleet, waste stream and supply chain. Recognizing that its guiding principle of everyday low costs and everyday low prices: can't have one without the other is supported by resource and waste minimization, Walmart has made significant strides in reducing its carbon footprint over the past seven years. 

Facilities-Related Green Initiatives   

Walmart is investigating, testing and incorporating a myriad of sustainable strategies for its new store prototypes and its existing store remodels. The technologies touch everything from lighting, refrigeration and energy to storm water control, daylight harvesting and HVAC. Here are some specifics:  

Image: Courtesy of Hunter Industries

Smart Irrigation. Walmart's focus on water management ranges from the use of low flow fixtures (1700 plumbing fixtures were replaced in the 4th quarter of 2007 throughout Walmart's Southeast portfolio resulting in savings of over $1M per year) to xeroscaping, green roofs and smart irrigation techniques. Infrastructure for real-time irrigation monitoring based on high-resolution weather data has been installed in hundreds of U.S. store locations over the past six years resulting in savings of millions of dollars and hundreds of millions of gallons of water.

 LED Lighting. LED lights are going to play an increasingly important role in Walmart's efforts to continue to reduce its energy consumption. Their pioneering use of LEDs for exterior signage, parking lot lights and refrigerated cases has become industry standard.  Walmart is currently testing LEDs for ambient sales floor lighting in its U.S. stores, having already incorporated LED ambient lighting into stores throughout China.

Interactive Building Plans. Three dimensional digital building plans that interface with analytical models for energy and water consumption are being tested by Walmart for both new construction and renovation projects. In addition to expediting project delivery as paper-based processes become obsolete, this new technology will enable performance goals for energy and water use to be incorporated into the design process with increasing accuracy. As realistic resource consumption goals become a standard part of the design process for Walmart and others, it becomes much more likely that measuring and managing down actual energy and water consumption will be the new normal.

Please join us as we work with public and private sector organizations to incorporate these exciting new technologies into your buildings and operations so that you and your customers can enjoy the low costs and low prices that go hand in hand with the greatest business opportunity of our time: sustainability.