Green Pea – The world's first sustainable shopping centre

In December 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, Francesco Farinetti opened Green Pea, the world's first completely sustainable shopping centre, in Turin. Here, and at the GDI Retail Summit in September, he explained how shopping and sustainability can go together.
11 August, 2021 by
Green Pea – Das weltweit erste nachhaltige Shopping-Center
GDI Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute
 

Francesco Farinetti is no stranger to innovative large-scale projects: his family has already enjoyed success with the Italian food chain Eataly. Their latest project is the sustainable shopping centre Green Pea in Turin.

Can a temple of consumption really be sustainable, though? For Farinetti, this is not a contradiction: “It needed a paradigm shift. Buy less, but buy better.” It is not a question of whether we should stop producing and consuming, he says, but rather that we should do so with respect. In this way, the customer becomes part of the change with every purchase.
Spread across 15,000 square metres over five floors, Green Pea offers a wide range of living and home, fashion and beauty products, all sustainably produced. Some 140 partners supply the items on offer. All of them have to sign a sustainability manifesto and their compliance with sustainability norms is monitored.

On the roof of the shopping centre, there is a spa with swimming pool, inviting visitors to linger. The building itself is, of course, completely self-sufficient in terms of energy use and was constructed with sustainable building materials. But that's not all: in the next ten years Farinetti is planning further green shopping centres – in Paris, London, Dubai, Tokyo, Moscow, Los Angeles, Toronto and Shanghai.

At the 71st International Retail Summit on 9 and 10 September 2021, Francesco Farinetti will reveal more about how to reinvent a moribund shopping format for the 21st century.

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