Office Depot to Build LEED-Certified Store

DELRAY BEACH, FLORIDA - Office Depot announced it will both build and open its first LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)-certified retail store in Austin, Texas in mid-2008.

The LEED Green Building Rating System is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings.

Simultaneously, Office Depot continues to refine its master set of drawings and specifications that comprise its store prototype and will investigate having the format LEED-certified as well.

Office Depot has already piloted the green building design concept of “daylight harvesting” in its Greensboro, NC store. This concept removes, on average, 250,000 lbs of carbon and greenhouse gases from the environment each year through high-performance daylighting.

Office Depot has already started green construction, having achieved the following during 2006:

· Saved nearly 66 million kWh of electricity due to energy efficiency and conservation efforts in North American warehouses and stores;

· Avoided approximately $6.2 million in electricity costs due to energy efficiency and conservation efforts in North American facilities;

· Dramatically reduced Absolute Greenhouse Gas emissions by 10.1% across N.A. buildings;

· Retrofitted nearly entire store chain (1,186 stores in North American) to T5 high-output lighting; and

· Rolled out an energy management system upgrade to the majority of stores in an effort to track usage and trends in one central location.

“Office Depot has successfully implemented a number of environmental construction initiatives over the past few years,” said Edward Costa, Vice President 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.”