Is Green Design Sustainable?

Green is no longer a front-burner issue. Just a few years ago, it was the hot topic in retail, reports Dan Butler, president, Maple Point Consulting and senior advisor, NRF. “When I created the NRF’s Sustainable Retail Consortium in 2008 everyone wanted to be a part of it,” he says. “I receive very few calls about it now.”

Butler attributes the steep decline in interest to other time- and resource-consuming issues (mobile retail, data breaches). “The feeling among retailers is that of course they want their stores to be sustainable and green has really taken off in the supply chain and in packaging. Outside of that the customer just expects stores to be green. But they don’t want to pay more for it.”

If our recent IRDC roundtable discussions were any indication, interest in the issue has waned significantly. Among the couple dozen hot topics retail design attendees were eager to address, green was at the bottom of the list.

While the industry is hardly abandoning the green movement, it seems fatigued by it. We know LEED accreditation is a time consuming and expensive process – and green’s payback, for retail, is questionable for brick-and-mortar projects that typically have a short lifespan compared to other commercial endeavors.   

Still, many suppliers remain keen on providing eco-conscious solutions, as evidenced by ongoing interest in the annual Greenbuild conference and our own green products showroom section.

The best expression of sustainability in retail today may largely be seen in energy reduction efforts, like Walgreens’ net-zero energy store in Evanston, Ill. that we featured in the September issue of VMSD and in-store designs that offer flexible configurations and fixture packages, such as the Puma store concept that was featured in the November 2013 issue.

And many retailers are still firmly committed to walking the green walk, both in their product mixes and store designs. Check out our coverage of recent sustainable retail projects on page 24 of the October issue.

“Retailers have found that sustainability initiatives resonate not only with their customers but with their employees as well,” Butler says, which suggests that green isn’t going away – it’s simply faded from today’s zeitgeist – and will most likely experience its own recycling resurgence in the not-so-distant future.