Month-long series of initiatives aimed at reducing carbon footprint and
    helping customers save money while helping environmentTORONTO, March 26 /CNW/ - Canadian Tire will join countries and people
around the world in celebration of the international Earth Hour by reducing
lights enterprise-wide on March 28th. This energy-saving initiative marks the
beginning of Earth Month at Canadian Tire - a month-long series of
environmental initiatives aimed at raising awareness about the importance of
maintaining the future health of the environment.
    Canadian Tire's Earth Month runs from March 28th through to the end of
April and includes a number of operational initiatives designed to reduce the
company's carbon footprint, as well as promotional activities offering
customers affordable, environmentally-preferable products to help them save
money, while helping the environment.
    "Canadian Tire's Earth Month is our way of communicating that together
with our customers and the community, we are all part of the solution for
creating a sustainable environment," says Mike Arnett, president, Canadian
Tire Retail. "Canadian Tire's action is guided by our sustainability strategy
which seeks to use less energy and cleaner sources of energy, reduce excessive
packaging, divert more waste from landfill, and to offer an assortment of
environmentally-preferable products to our customers."Canadian Tire Earth Month activities:
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    Helping customers save money and support environmental goalsCanadian Tire's Earth Month specials
    Canadian Tire's weekly flyer will include savings on
environmentally-preferable product choices from eco-friendly lawn care
products, household cleaners and reusable shopping bags to dimmers/timers,
energy meters and CFL bulbs.

    Tree Planting Partnership
    From April 11th - May 8th, 2009, customers across Canada who purchase an
environmentally-preferable Blue Planet product at Canadian Tire, will have a
tree planted in their name. The partnership through Trees Ontario is expected
to see 100,000 trees planted.
    The Blue Planet product line includes natural household cleaning
products, CFL light bulbs that use 75% less energy, rechargeable batteries and
energy meters, to name just a few.

    Green School Challenge Tree Planting Project
    In six cities across Canada, the winning schools of Canadian Tire's Green
School Challenge Award will receive trees and shrubs from Canadian Tire which
will be planted in their schoolyards this spring. (Participating cities:
Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg, Ottawa and Toronto).

    Operational initiatives

    Lights dimmed for Earth Hour
    On March 28th, Canadian Tire will reduce its lighting wherever feasible
across its store network, as well as at corporate offices located across the
country.

    Energy-efficient store lighting retrofits
    Canadian Tire's retrofitting project is nearing completion with all
stores switching over to energy-efficient lighting by the end of June. To
date, the project has resulted in 8,254 tonnes of CO2e not emitted in 2008 and
it is forecasted that approximately 9,480 tonnes of CO2e will be prevented
from being emitted in 2009. The national energy savings is estimated at
$14,000,000.

    Canadian Tire weekly flyer - paper sourcing strategy
    Canadian Tire has developed and implemented new paper procurement
guidelines for its marketing and flyer materials. The guidelines promote:
sustainable forest management through the purchase of paper originating from
third-party, independently certified forests; efficient use of wood fibre;
efficient resource utilization; efficient use of paper; climate change and
energy conservation initiatives; forest conservation and paper recycling. All
paper suppliers are required to track, audit and on a quarterly basis report
the type of paper sourced, amount of recycled paper and overall paper volumes.
This means that the amount of paper used in Canadian Tire's marketing and
flyer materials will be significantly reduced and more recycled paper will be
used.

    Reducing packaging and waste; recycling more products
    Canadian Tire is developing practices to divert as much waste as possible
from landfill and reduce the amount and diversity of waste materials in its
operations. In addition, opportunities are being developed to allow customers
to recycle more products with Canadian Tire and use fewer plastic bags when
shopping.

    Canadian Tire Corporation, Limited (TSX: CTC.a, CTC), operates more than
1,200 general merchandise and apparel retail stores and gas stations in an
inter-related network of businesses engaged in retail, financial services and
petroleum. Canadian Tire Retail, Canada's most shopped general merchandise
retailer, with 475 stores operated by dealers across Canada offers a unique
mix of products and services through three specialty categories in which the
organization is the market leader - Automotive, Sports and Leisure, and Home
Products. www.canadiantire.ca offers Canadians the opportunity to research
more than 25,000 products online. PartSource is an automotive parts specialty
chain with 86 stores designed to meet the needs of purchasers of automotive
parts - professional automotive installers and serious do-it-yourselfers.
Canadian Tire Petroleum is one of the country's largest and most productive
independent retailers of gasoline, operating 273 gas bars, 266 convenience
stores and kiosks, and 74 car washes. Mark's Work Wearhouse is one of the
country's leading apparel retailers operating 372 stores in Canada. Under the
Clothes that Work™ marketing strategy, Mark's sells apparel and footwear in
work, work-related, casual and active-wear categories, as well as health-care
and business-to-business apparel. www.marks.com offers Canadians the
opportunity to shop for Mark's products online. Canadian Tire Financial
Services has issued over 5 million Canadian Tire MasterCard credit cards and
also markets related financial products and services for retail and petroleum
customers. Canadians can also access Financial Services online at
www.ctfs.com. More than 57,000 Canadians work across Canadian Tire's
organization from coast-to-coast in the enterprise's retail, financial
services, and petroleum businesses.