Long before Wal-Mart's green experiment captured the headlines, others in the retail industry were already incorporating sustainable design practices into their everyday decisions and bottom lines.

REI, the outdoor gear and clothing retail cooperative with more than 2 million members, has long made green design a guiding principle of its store environments. In 2004, its new Portland, Ore., flagship earned a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) gold rating for commercial interiors from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), making it the first retail store to achieve this standard.

LEED is the USGBC's national rating system for sustainable buildings, introduced in 2000. To earn certification, a project must satisfy all of the prerequisites and a minimum number of points to earn a bronze, silver, gold or platinum rating.

The 37,500-square-foot REI store occupies the first two floors of a new mixed-use building in Portland's up-and-coming Pearl District. (See photo at top right.) “It makes sense for us to pursue this because our members have told us that this is important,” says Jerry Chevassus, vp, real estate, for REI (Kent, Wash.). “This hits so close to our values.”

Those values are established in the Pacific Northwest, where environmentally minded thinking goes hand in hand with backpacking and coffee. In fact, Portland's progressive thinking enabled the retailer to divert 96 percent of its construction waste from the landfill into recycling facilities.

Chevassus points out that LEED is helping people look at green design as more than the use of environmentally minded materials. “It's how you design the building, how much natural light you let in, how close you are to public transportation systems and that you offer bike racks for employees and customers,” he says. “It's a holistic approach to establishing a building.”

In the supermarket arena, Giant Eagle (Pittsburgh), with more than 200 grocery locations, became the first supermarket in the country to attain LEED certification for its Brunswick, Ohio, store.

Jim Lampl, Giant Eagle's director of conservation, says the company, which spent just 2 percent more than normal to build the store, has a culture of innovation that supports adopting forward-thinking technologies. “We are proving that you can have a profitable retail experience and be environmental,” he says. “In five years, we hope this will be the norm.”

The store uses non-toxic housekeeping products and forest-certified wood, purchases more than half its energy supply from a Pittsburgh wind farm and recycles 49 percent of its waste.

Lampl says Giant Eagle has adopted many components of the Brunswick store as its standard construction specs. To measure ROI, the company is looking at energy and water consumption and customer and employee satisfaction. In fact, the store has become one of the chain's best performers, reporting sales 20 percent higher than projected.

Marc Mondor, principal at evolveEA, a Pittsburgh-based design and consulting firm, who worked with Lampl on the project, says the key to Giant Eagle's success is having a green champion like Lampl to drive green decisions through the company. “There's nothing easier than putting in your standard prototype,” says Mondor. But once you can reprogram a company's way of thinking about design, he says, change can take place. In fact, Mondor and Lampl are already at work on a new LEED-qualifying Giant Eagle store in Pittsburgh.