Jul. 21--MCKINNEY, Texas -- From rubber sidewalks made with recycled tires to energy provided by wind turbines, solar panels and recirculated water, Wal Mart is experimenting with environmental sustainability.
The retailer this week opened its first experimental store in McKinney, Texas. A second is planned by October in Aurora, Colo.

"We're trying to be more environmentally sustainable. We hope to reduce the natural resources and energy we use in the building and utilize more renewable materials," spokesman Don Moseley said.

As he gave a tour of the store, Moseley pointed to energy-saving technologies. Radiant heat in the floor comes from refrigerator units on the roof. The units were installed closer to the cases they refrigerate to save power and copper piping.

Oil from deli-fried chickens and from the automotive center is stored and used to heat the building, as well.

LED lights instead of fluorescent bulbs in display cases will save enough energy to power 65 homes for a year, Moseley said.

Cloth ductwork, instead of metal, requires less cleaning, he said.

Solar panels on the roof and along the front of the store also will reduce the costs of lighting and heating the store.

Even the bathrooms have an experiment. Battery panels in the countertops trap energy from overhead lights and use it to power the automatic sinks.

And the changes are not just inside.

The parking lot is designed with wider landscaped islands, and shaded areas to create less "heat island effect."

The lot slopes to harvest rainwater that is then funneled back to landscaped plantings. One area of pavement is pervious concrete, letting water soak straight through to the soil, avoiding the need for wastewater pipes. An area of sidewalk is made from recycled tires. In all, there are 26 experimental areas.

Dan Heinfeld, an architect associate with LPA of Irvine, Calif., said the builder, Turner Construction Co., the engineering firm ARUP, and LPA architects began brainstorming hundreds of ideas two years ago.

"We assigned everything a level of priority and measured it against Wal-Mart's mission statement," he said.

Oak Ridge National Labs in Oak Ridge, Tenn., will monitor the experiments and make the energy savings information available to the public on a daily basis via kiosks in the store and on Wal-Mart's Web site. Jim McClendon, mechanical engineering manager for Wal-Mart, said the company will track energy used at the new store against a typical supercenter in McKinney.

"As we receive information on the impact and we see the feasibility, we can move very quickly to input the technology in other stores," he said.

Customers may not notice many of the changes in the store, but the one thing they are bound to see for miles around is a giant wind turbine in the parking lot of the McKinney Wal-Mart.

The turbine was installed by the only Oklahoma company involved in the project -- Bergey WindPower of Norman.

Father and son Karl and Michael Bergey said they've installed hundreds of turbines throughout the country, but this -- a 50 kilowatt, 46-foot diameter turbine -- is the largest so far.

The pair are hopeful Wal-Mart will see such good performance from their turbine that they will be interested in using the product at all their stores.