Environmental Leader

Wal-Mart Canda President and CEO David Cheesewright has announced plans to cut energy use by more than 30 percent in new Wal-Mart high-efficiency stores opening in 2009.

The “Wal-Mart HE” stores will be designed with features such as:

- Capturing waste heat from refrigerators to heat air in other areas of the store.
- Eliminating wasteful ways frozen foods have traditionally been stocked.
- Installing display lights that turn off and on based on customer-motion detectors.
- Cutting energy used to light sales floors by 20 percent.
- Installing LED lights in various application such as store-front signs.
- Incorporating low-flow water fixtures.
- Eliminating the need for constant heating, cooling and ventilation through centralized control.
- Using construction materials wisely, eliminating ceilings and changing chemical-intensive flooring.
- Reducing the size of prototypical stores and committing the company to improved logistics and efficiencies.

Wal-Mart is also partnering up with the Ontario government to invest and test new made-in-Ontario solar technology on the roof of a store planned for 2009 construction.

Although the company has been taking strides to green its brand — installing solar panels on its roof tops, reshaping milk cartons, and in one of its latest moves, asking suppliers to submit “green” products to help the company tell its story – critics recently blasted the company for lobbying in the U.S. against defining and standardizing carbon offsets.