Office Depot to open its first green store

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. Office Depot will continue on their green path by building and opening its first LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)-certified retail store in Austin, Texas in mid-2008, the company said Tuesday.

Simultaneously, Office Depot continues to improve its store prototype and will investigate having the format LEED-certified as well. The LEED Green Building Rating System is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings.

"Office Depot has successfully implemented a number of environmental construction initiatives over the past few years," said Edward Costa, vp of construction for Office Depot. "We see both our membership in the U.S. Green Building Council and our long-term strategy of having a retail store prototype LEED-certified as examples of Office Depot's environmental vision to increasingly buy green, be green and sell green."

Office Depot continues to enhance its stores with innovative concepts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Last year, the company saved nearly 66 million kWh of electricity due to energy efficiency and conservation efforts in North American warehouses and stores. Additionally, Office Depot has piloted the green building design concept of "daylight harvesting" in its Greensboro, N.C. store. This concept removes, on average, 250,000 lbs. of carbon and greenhouse gases from the environment each year through high-performance daylighting.