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SAFEWAY PROTOTYPE
LEEDS THE WAY Santa Cruz store is first of many LEED stores in Safeway’s green vision.
When Safeway decided to design its first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified store in Santa Cruz, CA, its goals were serious and far-reach- ing, according to Jim Gibbon, architectural coordinator, corporate construction and design at Safeway, and instrumental in its development.
The environmentally friendly unit, double the size of its 30,000- square-foot replacement, is an evolving prototype, a test laboratory of sorts, where innovative sustainability concepts are strategized, imple- mented and tweaked. This year alone, Safeway is busily engineering 15 more LEED-certified stores. Ultimately, Gibbon says he and his team strive to create a working template, which can be easily duplicated or adapted for eventual rollout to store formats throughout the retailer’s broad chain network.
Gibbon enthusiastically begins our tour by highlighting an innova- tive water recycling scheme that targets arguably one of the most important and under-addressed issues facing the industry: water utiliza- tion to avert shortages. “We’ve been in business for a hundred years and nobody knew how much water was being dumped into the sewer,” says Gibbon. Safeway conducted an analysis, which revealed a thou-
sand gallons a day going into the sewer. “We pulled off 700 gallons a day just from the sale area, and we only use 500 gallons for irrigation.”
Safeway water is generated inside the store from the retailer’s refrig- eration equipment and recycled for landscaping. In the next store, “we’re going to pump part of
that water into the bathrooms.
It’s a tremendous amount of water to waste,” he says, adding that the water is clean because it is simply generated by the process of freezing and cooling moisture from the humid Santa Cruz air.
Just For the Ride
Healthy living and Santa Cruz weather encourage good use of the 52-bike racks posi- tioned in four different loca- tions outside the store. And in
30 PRODUCE BUSINESS • MAY 2010