Wal-Mart and a World of Good

Wal-Mart. Can you remember a time when that name, and all it conjures, didn't even exist outside the teeny town of Bentonville?

Now Wal-Mart has an environmental footprint equal to small nations. Wishing Wal-Mart would disappear won't make it so, and probably wouldn't change the simple fact that one out of three Americans -- roughly 100 million people (ten times the population of Sweden!) -- visit Wal-Mart each week to find everything from apples to vitamins.

Just like a small country, Wal-Mart has some seemingly impossible but good and lofty long-term sustainability goals: zero waste, 100 percent renewable energy, more environmentally preferable products for its consumers.

Wal-Mart is like a small country, too, in that the effects are diffuse - the company estimates that just 8 percent of its footprint is under its direct control, while 92 percent is generated through its suppliers.

In that same vein, Wal-Mart is, for all its downsides, better run and more profitable than the U.S.A., and seems more efficient at making some of desirable changes that our government doesn't seem to have the will or the way to do. Wal-Mart's huge clout has made it successful in setting up a packaging scorecard (6,000 suppliers, 97,000 products). The scorecard has, among other things, gotten HP to reduce the consumer packaging on one new laptop by 97 percent - a 65 percent reduction when measured through the entire supply chain. The in-a-cloth-bag laptop takes the air out, so 25 percent fewer trucks are needed to get the merchandise to the store.

What Wal-Mart has figured out is that green is good for business. Last year it changed shipping crates from cardboard to plastic (they can be reused about 60 times) which reduced waste and carbon emissions, and saved $4.5 million a year to boot.

And Wal-Mart is trying to fill its product pipelines with more green products, and attempting to figure out what works for its customers -concentrated laundry detergent- as well as what doesn't -strange square milk jugs.

The main motivation for cheering Wal-Mart on in all its attempts to do good is that we all want, need, and dream about great, green department stores where we can find all the fabulous eco-products that currently are tucked away in lots of different boutiques and stores.

And now that green is seeping into the mainstream, if Wal-Mart doesn't satisfy everybody's increased demands for eco-friendlier products, someone else will - like Ebay, who recently announced that the launch of WorldofGood.com, a site that brings together third-party verified socially responsible products under a single online roof. Neither Wal-Mart or WorldofGood is quite as convenient as the old corner store, but with a little luck that may soon go greener, too.

More from TreeHugger on Wal-Mart
::Wal-Mart: The Next Steps Toward Sustainability
::It's Getting Harder To Hate Wal-Mart
::Wal-Mart Now US Largest Buyer of Locally Grown Produce
::Going Green Is Strictly Business: Just Ask Wal-Mart
::Wal-Mart's Eco-efforts: Mainstream Green or Pipe Dream?
::Bisphenol A: How Wal-Mart Became The New FDA

Comments

[DuPageDem]

"Wal-Mart is, for all its downsides, better run and more profitable than the U.S.A."
Do you mean more profitable than the US government? Governments aren't supposed to be profitable. They're supposed to provide services and commons which private entities and individuals cannot provide themselves. Those who think 'governement should be run like a business' are responsible for the mess we're now in. This piece smells like corporate propaganda.

[charleydan]

Nada, the government was not designed to to supply us anything. In fact our forefathers said, government should be small and not intrusive.

Kennedy had it right, ask not what the country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. He like many Presidents want people to help people.

That is the problem. People think that the government can have domestic welfare and it will not breed corporate welfare. Like the now government National Bank Frannie.

Wall Street has given five to one to Democratics. So believe you me, I expect lobbyist payoff. Just like George Soros has donated millions. Not without expectation as illustrated in the Democratic platform that will reward him for it his so called generousity.

[KillTheMessenger]

The main problem with Walmart (and the US as a whole) is not the retailer itself. It's the consumerism it supplies. And that can not be changed by or at Walmart but it has to change at the consumer.

[SlightlySick]

Isn't it amazing how they made all those changes without government intervention. Just remember it only takes an elected official to mess that up. Capitalism at its finest, find a need, fill a need!

[KillTheMessenger]

The did not "find" a need. They were forced to these changes by rising fuel costs which means they have to run fewer trucks for the same amount of merchandise, which means they need to increase packaging density. This has nothing to do with capitalism, but your post smells of poor thinking on your end.

[sheila]

BALONEY. they only got into all this when they realized that there were:

(a) lots of government incentives for Big Companies to "go green" and

(b) going to be enormous penalties for their past practices of externalizing all their costs onto society and the environment (taxpayers have to pay Wal Mart employee's healthcare, their products create massive GHG and toxic byproducts, etc.)

GOVERNMENT POLICY MUST LEAD ON THIS ISSUE. first things first, WE THE PEOPLE need to get all the same incentives as Big Corpa for "going green." if the govt. doesn't want to expose the 4,000 types of corporate welfare it offers (like they get a 30% tax credit for PV, while we can only get $2,000; they get to sell power to utilities, we have to give it to them for free and aren't allowed to oversize our generation systems to make money, etc.);, then they need to simplify our incentives so we end up in the same, competitive position as their corporate cronies.

for example, a feed in tariff as a multiple of retail for clean energy would give NORMAL AMERICANS a chance to participate in the renewable energy markets on a level playing field with the wilderness-killing Big Renewables companies. it's working with tremendous success in 40 countries already, so why is the US so desperate to hold us back while Big Energy re-centralizes its chokehold on us in a Renewable Energy Era? and why are we letting them?

[mouselion]

Touting Wal-Mart as being ahead of the curve for green retailing is about like saying Starbucks is the exemplar of fair trade or McDonald's is the poster child for healthy eating.

Because of its sheer economic largeness, anything it does that even hints at being environmentally friendly will be hailed as great and glorious. Workers still can not sustain a family on their pay. Women are still discriminated against. Wal-Mart still works to keep its workforce from unionizing, and it keeps people believing the illusion that they better off buying cheap products from Wal-Mart than buying locally-made equivalents.

We can't and shouldn't try to extinguish Wal-Mart -- but we can do all we can to change those statistic so that 1/3 of our population thinks it must shop in an unsustainable way.

[mamacat]

Should be asking ourselves how the government could be made more like WalMart, or should we be asking ourselves how WalMart could be made more like the government?

Most WM employees are forced into part-time work, from which they cannot support their families. Most WM employees, if they or someone in their family gets sick, are forced to use medical services paid for through the taxes of more fortuneate Americans.
If the employees of a WM anywhere in North America vote to be represented by a trade union, so that they can bargain for full time jobs, medical benefits, pensions, and those other things that make life better, the billionaire owners of WM immediately shut that particular store down.

Before this country fought the Civil War, there were many very, very profitable plantations. Unfortuneately they depended on slave labor. Would the author, 150 years ago, have compared the federal government to the slave plantations, and said that the government should emulate their behaviour? If not, then perhaps it is also questionable whether one should compare WalMart, with their reprehensible employee practices, to the federal government, which in most instances uses the laws governing civil-service employees.

One should remember how WalMart makes itself profitable before praising it.

[mamacat]

another typo.....should be a "we" between Should and be in first sentence.