Green Wombat

Wal-Mart (WMT) last year began operating two "green" stores that had been designed to minimize their impact on the environment. A preliminary review of the stores’ first year has found that the green technologies deployed – everything from high efficiency LED lighting in display cases to recycling cooking and motor oil to use as fuel to heat the buildings  – has been successful, according to Wal-Mart. The stores located in McKinney, Texas, and Aurora, Colorado, also repurpose the heat generated from refrigeration units to heat water and feature drought-resistant and native plants in landscaping watered with drip irrigation. An effort to power the stores with renewable energy from wind turbines was less successful due to mechanical problems. "When we conceptualized these two experimental stores, we thought about our environmental opportunities which led our thoughts to our current goals: to be supplied by 100 percent renewable energy, to create zero waste, and to sell products that sustain our resources and environment,” said Wal-Mart executive Charles Zimmerman in a statement. Two federal labs are evaluating the stores over a three-year period. When the monitoring is complete, Wal-Mart will decide which technologies to incorporate in its thousands of other stores.