LEED Grocery Store Incorporates LED Lighting
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A California grocery store was recently built to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold standards, incorporating energy and water reduction measures, efficient lighting and recycled materials.
The Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market in Cathedral City, Calif., just opened the store’s first certified LEED Gold by the U.S. Green Building Council. The construction used 90 percent recycled steel and typically Fresh & Easy’s stores incorporate solar tracking skylights, automatically dimming lights, and LED lighting.
Fresh & Easy’s stores are typically 10,000 square feet, smaller than the typical supermarket, and use 30 percent less energy. Fresh & Easy recycles or reuses all of its shipping and display materials and uses environmentally-friendly trailers to transport food.
Fresh & Easy currently has 127 stores in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada, with 71 stores in Southern California. The company is a pilot member of the LEED Volume Certification Program and has invested in a 500,000 sq ft solar roof installation on its distribution center in Riverside, Calif.
It's good to see big business taking the lead in utilizing solar energy like this. The more we see this happen as a nation, the sooner it will trickle down into everyday life.
This type of energy is America's future - if our planet is going to survive, it is our duty to demonstrate to the developing countries that massive use of fossil fuels to generate energy is yesterdays news.
It is wonderful reading about responsible corporations that use solar energy and other forms of green energy as well. More business should use Fresh and Easy as a model. And local governments should encourage them by given even more incentives and tax breaks. Shoppers should also encourage them by shopping at businesses that actually care about our environment and future.
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