PRSM

GREEN ARTICLES

PRSM Green Council "Cool" Topics

Over the next six months, ShopTalk's Green Article will feature discussions covering a recent "cool" topic affecting green retailers. This month, the focus is on lighting, including energy efficient retrofits, lighting types, and some benchmarking information to apprise readers of the current retail landscape.

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Lighting

ShopTalk, June 2008

Lighting design has typically been all about balancing ambient washing with feature spotting. The main goal has centered on obtaining the intangible result of inspiring our guest to "love" the store, see the store at the desired mood level, and buy-in to our retail story. Lighting manufacturers and vendors have been leading us to consider efficiency and life-cycle solutions for years. Recent advances with light-emitting diodes and lower wattage bulbs have combined with green "pressure" and rapidly escalating energy rates to force the issue with retailers and their architects. More architects than ever are in the middle of spending long hours with lighting vendors and design teams to determine the precise formula which produces maximum foot-candle influence and optimal guest experience using minimum energy demand.

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Feeling Good with Daylight Harvesting

ShopTalk, July 2008

By	James Emery Director - Construction & Facilities Collective Brands, Inc. PRSM Editorial Board Chair

There are many intangible benefits of beautiful, blue sky days, such as inspiring our moods and enhancing our ability to differentiate true colors more accurately. Our positive attitudes under the bright light of the sun, as opposed to the gloominess we feel under an overcast sky, typically inspire us to creativeness, accomplishment, and possibilities. These characteristics are good guest mindsets for us as retailers.

Yet, how do we measure the return on investment (ROI) of a "feel good" benefit? The truth is, maybe we can't! Instead, we can more readily baseline and post-mortem our energy demand. In fact, to the extent that your energy manager has been using some form of usage-capture software over the past year or more, it is quite possible to pilot a daylight harvesting program immediately. By using a simple "standardization and normalization" process to reduce usage data to a correlative base, any resulting demand decreases can be directly attributed to your day-lighting efforts.

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Decrease Your Company's Energy Use

ShopTalk, October 2008

By:

Allen Sandish

Divisional Vice President, Retail Construction & Facilities

Coldwater Creek

PRSM Green Council Member

Energy Efficiency was a major topic at the Mid-Year Conference. Unfortunately, the truth is that most companies' Energy Efficiency efforts are more about reducing operating costs and contributing to the bottom-line than about corporate environmental stewardship. While environmental sustainability can be a cause for operating more energy efficient facilities, reducing stores' operating costs are the true driver for most retailers' business decisions to focus on it. In the current financial climate, expecting our companies to invest in GREEN initiatives without a payback may not be realistic. But showing the financial benefits to the company's bottom line will get you approval to move forward with an Energy Management Program that has environmental sustainability as a byproduct .

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