DIY giant opens eco-store

B&Q pushes green products, sets stretch target on emissionsIt boasts the UK’s biggest building-mounted turbine, a rooftop garden, and solar panels. And it’s challenging the notion that consumers won’t go green in a recession. Opened in February, B&Q’s eco-store in New Malden, on the southern outskirts of London, is the DIY retailer’s most sustainable so far, with just half the emissions of a standard B&Q store. Other key features include:

• geothermal space heating
• solar thermal water heating
• energy-efficient lighting
• ‘sun pipes’ to bring natural daylight into darker areas of the store
• rainwater harvesting for the garden centre plants and for flushing the toilets.

David Childs, B&Q’s Director of Properties, said the building was conceived as a “testbed” for energy-saving and renewable energy measures, and is a step towards its goal of a zero-emission store by 2012. The company has set itself a stretch target of cutting carbon emissions by 90% by 2023.

There is, of course, a commercial side to the initiative: just as energy-saving technologies are used in the eco-store, so they are available to customers – albeit on a different scale. “We use the same solar thermal panels as we sell in our stores,” said Childs. “We have a 30,000-litre rainwater recovery tank; our customers can invest in water butts.”

Forum for the Future’s Dan Crossley welcomed the news. “Retailers like B&Q are trying to make sustainable products available, easier to understand and more affordable – and we would encourage that,” he said.

The company got customers through its doors with a cleverly timed offer on loft insulation, just a day after Ed Miliband announced plans for green makeovers for UK homes [see ‘Retrofits for Brits’]. It sold a million rolls priced at £1 each (a 90% reduction) in just three weeks.

The 90% carbon emissions reduction target – one of the most ambitious yet adopted by a major retailer – is part of a ‘One Planet Living’ initiative devised in conjunction with sustainability charity BioRegional. Specific measures include:

• building and retrofitting low-energy stores
• sourcing local, seasonal, organic and fairtrade food for canteens and cafes
• devising a logistics strategy to reduce haulage fuel use.

– Chris Alden

11 May 2009

Chris Alden

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