Grocer pushes Earth-friendly store design

This state prides itself on environmental leadership.

State-owned buildings buy all their energy from renewable sources and state offices are heated by biodiesel. New England’s largest utility-grade wind farm is here, and at least three more are proposed or under regulatory review.

Now a Maine-based grocery chain has announced plans for a state-of-the-art green supermarket. Though some of the store’s potential neighbors voice doubts, environmentalists have been cheering since Hannaford Bros. Co. unveiled its plans in September.

Plants would be grown on part of the store’s roof to add insulation and control storm water. It would also have photovoltaic panels to generate solar energy, geothermal heating and cooling, high-efficiency refrigeration, energy-efficient lighting and an advanced recycling program.

These features are part of the reason that the supermarket, planned for Maine’s capital, Augusta, would be the U.S. Green Building Council’s first “platinum certified” green grocery store, said Ronald Hodge, Hannaford’s chief executive. The council’s system carries ratings of silver, gold and the highest, platinum.

“We can think of no better place for Hannaford to invest in a first-in-the-world environmental design,” Hodge said.

Hannaford is part of an industry trend stretching well beyond America’s borders, said James Carvin, editor of Supermarket Green News. The green movement has also gone over in a big way in Britain’s supermarket industry, where most major players have pledged to address environmental and sustainability issues, according to the Environmental Leader website.

In Florida, the Publix supermarket chain has also embraced designs that save energy, Carvin said.

His website reports other green developments that don’t involve construction. Uniglobe Environmental Solutions Inc. has developed an environmentally friendly machine to wash shopping carts.

Housed in a trailer, the new system recycles water. Pressure washing, a technique of choice now, allows cleaning solutions used in the washing to enter storm drains.

“There is definitely increasing attention by retailers and other commercial businesses to reduce their carbon footprint and reduce their energy costs,” said Dylan Voorhees, clean energy director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

Voorhees said this trend was the subject of a workshop at a recent global warming conference in neighboring New Hampshire, which was attended by four presidential contenders.

“Hannaford is on the leading side of this trend,” Voorhees said. “Is it happening fast enough? Absolutely not.”

Hannaford, which is based in Scarborough, Maine, wants to build its store on the former site of Cony High School. Hodge cast it as “a research laboratory” for the company to test innovations that lower energy use, waste and water consumption.

But the project has been challenged in state courts by those who say it would violate a 19th century trust agreement of Daniel Cony, who wanted the site limited to educational uses.

A judge’s decision in favor of the project has been appealed to the state’s supreme court. A new high school has replaced the building that now stands vacant on the proposed market site.

Some residents of the surrounding neighborhood object to the proposed store not just because they believe it violates the Cony trust.

Jerry Bumford of the East Side Neighborhood Network said neighbors were mostly concerned about traffic from shoppers and delivery trucks the market would draw.

Bumford said local traffic levels had eased during the last couple of years thanks to a new bridge that crosses the Kennebec River on the city’s north side, but “putting a Hannaford’s here is going to bring that right back.”

The new store would replace an older Hannaford market a couple of blocks away, one of 160 the chain operates throughout the Northeast.

It’s estimated that the store would be 40% more energy-efficient than the industry standard, said Megan Hellstedt, Hannaford’s environmental sustainability manager.

And construction would be environmentally friendly too, says the company, which promises to exceed standards set by the nonprofit U.S. Green Building Council.

Although its platinum rating encourages the company to recycle 50% of the old high school building on the construction site, Hellstedt said the company’s goal was to recycle 95% of the building and its contents.

Maine Gov. John Baldacci, who joined company officials at the announcement of the supermarket, said the 49,000-square-foot store would join a growing list of state and private buildings that require minimal energy.

“We are leading by example,” he said.