TD Bank is going carbon neutral and building LEED-qualified banking centers
From Green Right Now Reports
TD Bank, which touts itself as America’s Most Convenient Bank, has decided to build its next branches to green building standards, the corporation announced today at its first green branch in Farmingdale, N.Y..
The bank, with more than 1,000 stores from Maine to Florida, will be opening another green store, a prototype for more to come, at 214-32 Jamaica Ave., Queens Village, N.Y., this spring.
TD Bank, with headquarters in Cherry Hill, N.J. and Portland, Maine, declared that its entire operation will now be carbon neutral, via its greener buildings, lowered energy consumption and purchases of renewable energy.
The bank expects to open another five to 10 new green stores in 2010, the majority of which will be submitted for LEED certification at the platinum level.
Those new branches will include features such as wood from sustainably managed forests, low VOC building materials, insulated glass to cut heat gain and sensors to control lighting.
The Queens prototype store, and subsequent stores, will have a solar canopy over the drive-through lanes that will generate electricity (hey customers be sure to cut the engine while waiting in line). The Queens location also will have secure bike parking, efficient plumbing and drought-tolerant landscaping.
In 2011, “the vast majority of new TD Bank stores constructed will be LEED certified” and all stores thereafter will be LEED qualified, the bank reported. TD Bank already opened LEED certified offices at 200 State Street in Boston, and it is buying enough wind power to run its entire network of 2,600 Automated Teller Machines (ATMs).
TD Bank’s new 3,800 square-feet stores based on the Queens prototype will reduce energy consumption by 50 percent compared with previous designs, the company estimated, with nearly 20 percent of the store’s energy being produced on-site through solar panels and those solar drive-through canopies.
Tapping the sun. Now that’s convenient.