Supermarkets have shown they’re keen on using renewable materials to make and remake their stores. That’s a great step, but for many companies this is still a new frontier, and so it doesn’t hurt to look abroad for inspiration.

In this case, we’re talking way abroad — out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, somewhere near the Line Islands that sit halfway between California and Australia. That’s where Plastiki, a boat made from 12,500 recycled plastic bottles, is currently plying the waves.

If it sounds like the eco version of the movie “Up”, well, that’s because it is. Inspired by Kon-Tiki, the primitive boat that carried Thor Heyerdahl across the Pacific Ocean in 1947, Plastiki is on one of the longest eco missions in history. It set out from San Francisco in March, with hopes of reaching Sydney Harbor by July. That timeline may be a stretch, as the crew conceded in an interview with The New York Times (revelation: it’s a slow boat), but that doesn’t tarnish the overall goal of raising awareness about recycling, the need for sustainable energy, and all the stuff we throw away — much of which, in fact, can be found in the Eastern Garbage Patch, a watery landfill twice the size of Texas that Plastiki navigated through.

Determined to go against the spirit of waste that created “the gyre”, Plastiki is a marvel of renewable engineering. MORE…

Don’t ask me why, but 2015 has all of a sudden become the year for green transformations.

Last week, Wal-Mart said it plans to cut 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from its supply chain by 2015. It will do this by going through stores category-by-category, rooting out the products responsible for the highest carbon output, and then working with suppliers to reduce the amounts. This could mean Wal-Mart’s vendors need to revisit how they source ingredients, the way they ship their products; changing whatever process is using the most energy.

The changes could be big, and manufacturers, many of whom have worked with the retailer on its packaging scorecard, may not be enthused about Wal-Mart calling the shots like this. But Wal-Mart argues, compellingly, that such changes would put them ahead of the regulatory curve and into consumers’ good graces.

“As we help our suppliers reduce their energy use, costs and carbon footprint, we’ll be helping our customers do the same thing,” said Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke, in a statement.

The Bentonville retailer has made strides with this and other efforts to tame emissions — but it’s not the most ambitious company out there. That title arguably belongs to Great Britain’s Marks & Spencer, which announced today that it aims to become the world’s most sustainable retailer by 2015. MORE…

In the four years I’ve lived in New York, I’ve gotten used to buying only what I can carry home from the grocery store. Doing this is nice because its quick, because it’s good exercise, and because we waste less food. But man, sometimes I can’t help but remember fondly those days (college) when I’d load down the car with everything I needed — and didn’t need — for the week, and just drive home.

The automobile, that symbol of American independence, offers many of the conveniences and efficiencies we enjoy. And yet its excessive in so many ways as well, for ourselves and for the environment. In the down economy, Americans scrapped 14 million cars and only purchased 10 million, according to a new study by the Earth Policy Institute, leading to a 2% decline in the country’s auto fleet. That’s the first decline since World War 2.

Much of this is due to people taking advantage of the federal “Cash for Clunkers” program, and generally unburdening themselves of the financial weight that comes with owning a car. But the EPI says there’s also evidence that, particularly amongst younger consumers, people want to skip the car to help reduce emissions. It’s possible that by 2020, the institute says, we could own 10% less than the current fleet. MORE…

Give consumers some credit — they know a lot about sustainability, and they like to know when they’re shopping a store that’s doing it’s part to make the world just a little bit greener.

It’s the retailer’s job to fill them in, of course. And that’s no easy task. How do you explain the new refrigeration systems in marketing language? What about that energy-saving doohickey that heats the front doors? Do you tell them about that?

Supermarkets have been shy about talking directly to their shoppers about sustainable design. Many just put out a press release and let us do the rest. But then there are those like Food Lion that really step up. The Salisbury, North Carolina-based retailer made headlines this week by opening its first “green” store in South Carolina — but for months, ever since it broke ground on the site in July, the company has been providing construction updates and education on its website.

Click over to their dedicated page, and you’ll find an interactive menu with tips, pictures, a video, and even a quiz aimed at promoting the new store. Take the quiz to discover that the store uses 20% less energy than a typical supermarket, has LED lights in its refrigeration units, uses low-flow water systems that conserve more than 140,000 gallons of water a year, and more. Didn’t score 100%? You should be ashamed of yourself. MORE…

As part of an ongoing effort to update the nation’s aging power grid, companies have introduced “smart meters” as a new way to monitor energy levels. What makes them so “smart”? Well, aside from sparing the rhododendrons beneath your old analog meter getting trampled each month by some burly reader, smart meters conserve energy and give consumers feedback and control over their power levels. It’s a digitized, interactive version of your house’s energy system — and it’s all online.

Bear with me here.

It’s pretty clear that these smart meters are — or at least represent — the future of household energy, and manufacturers like General Electric and Whirlpool have jumped on board. GE has started distributing the first ever “smart appliance”, a water heater that links into the smart meter system. Whirlpool, meanwhile, plans to make 1 million “smart dryers” by 2011.

As our appliances get smarter, it stands to reason that food will need to follow suit. If people log on and see, for example, that they’re using way too much energy powering their microwaves, they may buy fewer frozen meals, or perhaps search out foods with shorter cooking times. The transparency, the new levels of information, could very well change the way people think about their food. We’re all concerned with nutrition facts — well, what about “energy facts”?

This is all very hypothetical right now. But it’s not too hard to imagine, especially given people’s growing concern over energy use, carbon footprints and such.

And of course, there’s always the possibility that the smart appliances could become too smart, and end up taking over the world.

(photo courtesy of pasukaru76)

When it comes to cutting carbon output, Tesco is one of the best in the business. The British retailer has planned a “zero carbon” store, and now promises that any new location it builds will put out half the emissions of one built in 2006. The company has also enlisted its shoppers in the mission, putting carbon footprint labels — which indicate the total output for growing, manufacturing, transporting and storing an item — on hundreds of products.

And just to further prove that Sir Terry and the gang are serious about saving the planet, I give you this, courtesy of London’s Daily Telegraph (via CHOW):

Tesco has fitted microphones to a herd of cattle to monitor their belching and flatulence in a bid to reduce methane emissions.

That’s right, Tesco is so dedicated that they’ll subject poor researchers to the odious symphony of a cow’s insides. All kidding aside, methane produced by cattle is a serious offender in the global warming dilemma, and so figuring out how to curb it could be a big step forward. The scientists working with Tesco have wired up 200 cows and plan to study them for 12 months to track the impact various feeds have on their intestines.

Retailers like the promotional upside of reusable bags and other convenient sustainability measures. If they’re going to talk about “commitment”, as so many of them do, though, they should be ready to let things get a little messy, and a little strange. Maybe not monitoring-cow-farts strange, but something close to it.

Like most of the country, I did a double-take when I saw the number, then squinted at the screen to make sure I wasn’t reading a typo: The new GM/Chevrolet Volt can conceivably go 230 miles on a gallon of gas.

Wow. My first car was a flesh-colored 1972 Ford Pinto, which got pretty good mileage, as I recall, since it never exploded. My second car was a 1964 4-door Lincoln Continental — a car I still regret selling. That had a 460 cubic inch engine and a wheelbase of more than 120 inches — obviously a cruiser made for times when parking spots were more plentiful and gas was something like 20 cents a gallon (leaded, at that).

So, to sit here yesterday and read about a car that can go 40 miles without using a drop of gas or an estimated 230 miles on a gallon struck me as, well, foreign.

I am not used to this. I think I pay 30 bucks to fill up my current car, a 2008 VW Rabbit that gets close to 30 mpg on the highway — pretty good in my book. The Volt charges from a 120 outlet and relies on a state-of-the-art lithium-ion battery, a name that vaguely sounds like the ingredients that powered the “She won’t go any faster, Capt’n!” Enterprise.

MORE…

Sustainably designed, LEED-certified grocery stores are going up rapid fire these days, and now comes one claiming to be the greenest of them all. This Saturday, Hannaford will open what it hopes will become the country’s first Platinum LEED certified supermarket.

Those in the retail business know: Platinum certification is the granddaddy of them all, the most prestigious, most hard-won symbol of environmentally responsible design out there. And Hannaford has taken some pretty complex, innovative steps in getting their new store, located in Augusta, Maine, up to snuff.

For starters, the company decided to place the store on a preexisting site — a former high school — rather than develop new land. When it did tear down the old building, it made sure to recycle between 96 and 99% of the materials removed. In building the store, Hannaford made sure to provide ample daylighting and install high-efficiency overhead lights. Much of the company’s energy needs come via a large solar panel array, and a high-tech GreenChill refrigeration system means the company will use 50% less energy than a conventional system. To heat the store during cold Maine winters, Hannaford installed a setup that will repurpose energy generated elsewhere in the system, thus cutting down on inputs consumption.

It’s all enough to make a non-technical person like myself go cross-eyed. But it’s another positive step for the industry, and according to Hannaford all the new features should combine to create the same convenient grocery experience that people are used to. (photo courtesy of doortoriver)

Alternative energy is and always has been a tough sell for supermarkets, which operate on margins often too low to justify a $2 million solar panel setup.

The movement is constantly evolving, however, and prices for renewable materials and systems are going down while performance is going up. Federal and many state governments offer tax breaks, rebates and outright grants, and with the Obama administration pushing hard to expand these incentives further, the future for alternative energy is looking particularly sunny.

Supermarkets from Wal-Mart to Whole Foods aren’t wasting any time; lately they’ve been busy installing — and planning to install — solar panels that can cover up to 50% of a store’s energy needs. Wal-Mart just announced it plans to double its solar energy use with 10 to 20 new installations in California (which offers the most generous incentives in the country as part of its goal to source 33% of its energy renewably by the year 2020). Whole Foods, meanwhile, plans to triple the number of stores with solar panels, bringing the total to nearly a quarter of all its stores. MORE…

We’ve always heard that companies can lose money by refusing to go green, and now it appears we may know just how much. According to a study released this week by New York management consulting firm A.T. Kearney, packaged goods companies that don’t effectively incorporate sustainability into their business plan could see earnings reduced by as much as 31% by 2013 and 47% by 2018.

That’s a pretty ominous forecast, but it underlies an excellent point. Investing in smaller packaging, waste reduction, solar panels and the like certainly has long-term cost benefits, but the recession (we can now call it that) has companies reluctant to go for the green right now. The Kearney study, however, notes that environmental policy and trends will have long-term effects on key commodity prices. Keep putting it off, and you’ll find yourself left behind.

Thankfully, a lot of companies out there do understand the value of sustainability no matter what their financial situation is. They need to keep it up, convince others, and then once they’ve reached their current goals, set the bar even higher.