Kohl's Goes for the Gold

Kohl's is giving Walmart a run for their money in the store design department. Kohl's has become the first US company to earn LEED Gold pre-certification for their new store design prototype. The company is not new to LEED, they have been using a LEED Silver store prototype since 2008 and have over 200 LEED certified stores. Further green kudos come form the EPA, who named them to the top of the 2010 list of green power purchasers.

Read more at Environmental Leader

Read Kohls sustainability report

LEED Designed Factories

The recent announcement of VW that their newest Passat factory in Chattanooga is Platinum LEED certified got us wondering...Are there any other LEED factories?  This is what we found:

There is the famous Ford River Rouge plant designed by William McDonough and Partners. Read about it at their website.

Steelcase has one for manufacturing their wood furniture. Read about it in Architecture Week

Here is a factory in China with Gold certification. They are a supply for power equipment, so it is a good sign that they are thinking about efficiency. Read about it in the trade publication Electrical Portal

P&G commits to building their next Chinese factory with LEED certification and pledges that all new factories will be LEED certified. Furthermore, P&G announced that it will:

• Power its plants with 100 percent renewable energy
• Use 100 percent renewable or recycled materials for all products and packaging
• Send zero consumer and manufacturing waste go to landfills
• Designing products "that delight consumers while maximizing the conservation of resources."

Read about P&G's plans at GreenBiz.com

Read more about the VW LEED factory at Reuters.com

Do you know of any others LEED or energy efficient factories? Post them in the comments.