Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, opened a new experimental store in the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colo., Wednesday.
The retail giant is using a variety of innovative technologies aimed at being more environmentally friendly. Wal-Mart opened the first such experimental “Supercenter” in McKinney, Texas, over the summer.
The store will be partly powered by a 120-foot wind turbine. More than 500 tons of material from what used to be a Stapleton Airport runway went into the foundation, after being crushed and recycled. And used vegetable oil from the deli and old motor oil from the lube center are being burned to help heat the facility.
Wal-Mart’s director of experimental stores, Don Moseley, says what’s learned from the effort can be used in building new stores and to retrofit existing stores. He calls it “the world’s largest recycling project.”