 Background
Sainsbury’s has an overall target to reduce CO2 emissions per square metre by 25% by 2012 in its stores and is seriously committed to reducing its carbon footprint.
Sainsbury’s has opened its new flagship green store in Dartmouth, Devon, built with consideration for the use of energy, water, waste, timber and land.
The store is aiming to be one of the first supermarkets to achieve a BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating for its commitment to sustainable construction, and has been specifically designed to reduce the amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere.
How the issue was tackled
The new flagship environmental store in Dartmouth opens its doors as Sainsbury’s also celebrates nearly ten years of the UK’s very first green store in Greenwich, London.
Ahead of its time in 1999, Sainsbury’s environmentally responsible store in Greenwich has acted as a test-bed for many of the technologies now installed at Dartmouth, and continues to be an environmental leader. The Greenwich store has recently been updated with a whole host of environmental systems to ensure it can lead sustainable supermarkets for another decade.
Benefits and impacts
The pioneering store will save 40% of its overall CO2 emissions. This will be achieved by using cutting edge technology such as a ‘biomass boiler’ which will heat the building and water, and uses locally sourced wood which would otherwise be wasted. Using no gas whatsoever at the store, this system uses renewable energy and means energy currently taken from the national grid will now be slashed by 50%.
The new Sainsbury’s store has been designed to leak less draughts, and other measures, such as ‘quiet revolution wind turbines’™ will now power the checkouts, and contribute to cutting electricity usage (kWh) by a third.
Rainwater will be collected, and used to flush customer and colleague toilets, and to irrigate plants. The store will save over one million litres of mains water every year, and uses 60% less water overall.
Lower lighting levels, the use of daylight and dimming light also make carbon savings, and cool air will be collected from chillers to keep the store cool during warmer months. Plus the lights at the back area of the store turn off if no-one’s there.
The store’s construction is also environmentally responsible, and where possible recycled or recyclable materials have been used or FSC-approved timber. As 200 trees have been used for the frame of the store, Sainsbury’s will also re-plant 400 trees in the local community.
Sainsbury’s now plans to replicate many of the sustainable features in the Dartmouth store across the UK, and pledges to open a minimum of two green supermarket-sized stores every year, plus a greener Sainsbury’s Local, as well as extend existing stores with a range of environmental measures.
Advice to others
The new Dartmouth environmental store is the culmination of a number of years of work and trials of technologies which all started with the launch of Greenwich back in 1999.
This has been achieved by reducing ’operational carbon’, the CO2 emissions from the energy used at the store i.e. electricity and gas, and ‘embodied carbon’ which relates to how the store has been built and the energy used in its construction.
Neil Sachdev, Commercial Director, Sainsbury’s, says: ‘The carbon reduction at this store is significant, but many of the steps are small, yet collectively they can have a huge impact.’
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