by Brianna Crandall — May 27, 2015—The Professional Retail Store Maintenance Association (PRSM), the authority on retail, multi-site facilities management, presented the PRSM Annual Awards to four individual members and three member companies at the recent PRSM2015 National Conference.
2015 PRSM Innovation in Sustainability Awards were presented to JCPenney, Starbucks Coffee Company and Walgreens. Separate PRSM press releases outlined sustainability initiatives at JCPenney and Walgreens, highlighted below.
JCPenney
JCPenney was recognized for its comprehensive effort to integrate corporate sustainability and drive results through energy conservation, recycling and waste, and logistics management. The company’s sustainability efforts date back to 1991, and have been continually reinforced by a variety of successful energy-saving and conservation initiatives.
JCPenney’s efforts gained national attention in 2007 when it became the first retail company to earn the ENERGY STAR rating for one of its stores. Today, JCPenney has received ENERGY STAR certification at more than 600 retail stores, one supply chain facility and its home office.
Additionally, in 2009, JCPenney set a goal of reducing energy consumption 20 percent by 2015. The initiative is based on an aggressive plan of lighting retrofits, deployment of energy management sytems, use of renewable energy and enhanced store operations that empower general managers to monitor energy performance.
To help achieve its goals at the store level, JCPenney associates have access to an online “energy center” that provides consumption data for each store. Individual store data, viewed in comparison to retail store benchmarks from ENERGY STAR, help store operations take corrective action to reduce energy usage or address problems as soon as they occur.
Walgreens
Walgreens was recognized for its Net Zero Store, which is located at 635 Chicago Avenue in Evanston, Illinois. The Net Zero Store, anticipated to produce energy equal to or greater than it consumes, opened in November 2013 and is believed to be the nation’s first net zero energy retail store.
In addition to utilizing two wind turbines, nearly 850 solar panels, and a geothermal energy system burrowed 550 feet into the ground, Walgreens also incorporated LED lighting, daylight harvesting and carbon dioxide refrigerant for heating, cooling and refrigeration equipment and deployed the latest in energy-efficient building materials into the Net Zero store.
According to Walgreens, the NetZero store was designed to consume 41 percent less energy than the average Walgreens store in the Chicago metro area on an annual basis, and it is estimated that the store will use 200,000 kilowatt hours per year of electricity, 55 percent less than the typical store, while generating 220,000 kWh of electricity annually.
