Sears Earns EPA National Building Competition Awards

Home Textiles Today Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 12/13/2010 3:26:10 AM

Sears Holdings Corporation's Glen Burnie, Md.- based store earned second place in the U.S Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) first-ever National Building Competition.
     This competition challenged teams from 14 buildings across the country to measure their energy use and work off the waste with help from the EPA's Energy Star program.
     The Glen Burnie store team accomplished several achievements:
     A 31.7% reduction in energy use, which is comparable to the electricity used in 33 homes for a year;
     $45,612 in savings on the store's energy bills, creating enough money to buy 61 Energy Star Kenmore Elite high-efficiency top load washers;
     And reduced the carbon footprint of the store by more than 272 metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is equal to taking 52 cars off the road for a year.
     Additionally, the Glen Burnie Sears reduced its energy consumption through numerous energy efficiency initiatives including, but not limited to: an interior lighting retrofit of the entire store that called for replacing inefficient 4 lamp 30w light fixtures with energy efficient 2 lamp 32w light fixtures, thus reducing consumption and realizing higher light output to brighten the store for its associates and customers; the use of modified level lighting during maintenance crew cleaning times by rebalancing the light to the proper level.