‘This is a wonderful book that should be on the desk of every architect and planner. It shows how

How can retrofitting possibly be said to measurably increase retail sales?
Wal-Mart discovered the relationship between sales and daylighting when it built a store that had 
daylighting on only half of its roof. To cut costs during construction, Romm reports, Wal-Mart only 
put skylights in half the roof and left the rest without daylighting. Register activity soon showed that 
sales per square foot, or ‘sales pressure’, were significantly higher for departments located in the daylit 
half of the store. Moreover, many employees requested to be moved to the daylit side. Similarly, a 
study of 73 stores of a California chain found daylighting increased sales by 1–6 per cent, which was 
far more than energy cost savings.
25
But perhaps the main financial benefit of retrofits is that they are 
a safe, low-risk investment with a high rate of return. Commercial real estate is bought on the basis 
of a 10-year return on investment, and most case studies indicate that energy upgrades of existing 
buildings have a payback period of less than 10 years. A 2003 study indicated that the extra costs of 
new green buildings was only about 2 per cent on average in California, due to capacity building in 
green design and construction.
26
And that figure is rapidly going down. Further, corporate investment 
is reimbursed many times over through a range of wider benefits (see below). The reduced costs 
achievable through ‘capacity building’ in green design and materials will translate to retrofitting 
projects as well. But eco-retrofitting programmes and practices need to consider issues surrounding 
the recycling of materials as well. 
Would using recycled materials in new buildings avoid the need to retrofit?
No. The trend towards increased reuse of old materials in new construction is a positive one, of 
course. This trend is due in part to the internet, which can connect builders to recycled materials 
near the job site. But while important, recycling in construction still has many practical impediments 
and costs:
•
Construction requires timely delivery of materials from nearby areas, as transport costs and
impacts can make the recycling of heavy or bulky construction materials too expensive in
some cases. This adds risk.
• 
Many products are not easily deconstructed and reused [Box 6]. For example, aluminium- 
framed windows, in many cases, cannot practically be removed from brickwork without
breaking them. Bricks in many regions now use binders that prevent their reuse, so such
bricks are simply crushed and used as rubble, ie ‘downcycled’ [Chapter 14].
• 
Sometimes the demolition of an old building is unexpectedly delayed, so the materials are
not available when planned for and needed at the new construction site.
• 
When parts of old buildings are reused or recycled, there is still a lot of embodied waste that
ends up in landfill when the rest of the buildings are demolished. Materials sometimes entail
toxins, waste and losses of energy in reprocessing. Chemicals in conventional building
materials and furnishings off-gas toxins (largely due to petrochemical components in vinyl
flooring, PVC pipes, plastics, resins, binders, paints, etc). 
To have low life-cycle impacts, of course, eco-logical design principles must apply to material selection, 
use, and ongoing procurement and modifications, as well as to solar heating, cooling and ventilating, 
whether in new or retrofitted construction. Even retrofits need to be adaptable.