Vistar Corp. has seen the light, literally. The distributor of specialty foods to vending machines, office coffee services, sandwich shops and theaters has installed highly efficient lighting from Orion Energy Systems at its Ontario, Calif., distribution center, doubling and even quadrupling light levels in most areas of the facility.

That may not sound particularly unusual until you consider that Vistar leases the facility. Yet Vistar's management had no qualms about authorizing the installation in someone else's building once they learned that the fixtures would save enough on energy to pay for themselves in less than two years. And because the 209 Illuminator lighting fixtures are removable, the company can always take them along if it ever leaves the building.

Since the fixtures were installed, lighting levels have increased, though energy consumption is expected to drop by over 440,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. That's a savings of 8.8 million kWh over the expected lifetime of the lighting system, the equivalent of sparing 1,619 acres of trees, saving 802,240 gallons of gasoline or removing 1,250 cars from the road. The lighting is also said to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. So not only are employees seeing better, they no longer have to yearn to breathe free.