UK retailer Sainsbury's unveiled its flagship environment-friendly store in Devon, southwest England, this week, in a bid to reduce energy bills, reports Just-Food.com.

Sainsbury’s Dartmouth-based ‘green’ store is designed to reduce CO2 emissions and was built with consideration for the use of energy, water, waste, timber and land, the retailer said. The new store features solar-powered fans and toilets that can be flushed using rainwater.

'We are really proud of our new flagship environmental store in Dartmouth,” Neil Sachdev, commercial director, Sainsbury's, said. “We've been keen to experiment with a number of energy saving measures here, from sun pipes, which provide amazing natural light, to using a timber frame rather than steel, which consumes less energy in its production, but looks good too. We now want to apply all these benefits to the rest of our stores.'

Sainsbury's plans to replicate some of its Dartmouth store’s features across the UK, and said it will open a minimum of two ‘green’ supermarket-sized stores every year, plus more environment-friendly Sainsbury's Local outlets.

The retailer said it has a target to reduce CO2 emissions per square metre by 25 per cent by 2012.