Wal-Mart Goes Green and High-Tech With a Roof Garden and Scan-N-Go iPhone App

The New App Allows You to Shop and Check Out With Your Smartphone

Well look at you, Walmart, getting all fancy with your rooftop garden in Portland and your Scan & Go iPhone app that analysts are predicting could change the way Americans shop. You go, Walmart.

The Arkansas-based retailer finally made headway into landing an outlet in big box store-adverse Portland, Oregon with the company's plan to build a 90,000-square-foot store in Portland, with a green roof that will be the largest green roof in the entire state of Oregon.

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The vegetated roof, with its carbon dioxide-absorbing capabilities, will measure 40,600 square feet when it's completed, MNN.com reports, which is about 10,000 square feet larger than the current largest green roof in Oregon.

The Hayden Meadows Walmart, as the store will be called, is the company's second foray into green rooftops, after experimenting with one at a Chicago area store.

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Meanwhile, Walmart's other big news this week involves a new iPhone app that analysts are predicting will change the way consumers shop.

Walmart has already tested Scan & Go, a new program that allows customers to scan their purchases with their smartphones, then pass through a special self-checkout line that will send them on their way with their bags of Walmart goods.

The company conducted a test of the app in an Arkansas-area store, and could soon roll out the app to stores across the country, according to a report at TheWeek.com.

If the new Scan & Go technology is successful, it could eliminate one of the main reasons some shoppers avoid Walmart: those maddeningly long checkout lines.

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Scan & Go would still have customers walk through a checkout line to actually pay for their purchases, but because all their items would be scanned in, it would take just a fraction of the time to hand over cash or a credit card and get the next person in line up to the checkout station.

Plus, the Wall Street Journal reports that Walmart says it can save $12 million in cashier salaries for every second it shaves off the checking out process.

Which should mean even lower prices -- and maybe better, more cleanly and attractively-stocked stores? -- for us, right?