Wal-Mart Hires Rocky Mountain Institute
by Jeff McIntire-Strasburg, St. Louis, MO on 06.12.06
We're a couple of days late on this one, but Wal-Mart has taken another encouraging step in its quest to become a more sustainable company: it's hired the Rocky Mountain Institute as a consultant. RMI will work with the retail giant on efforts to double the fuel efficiency of its trucking fleet, and to cut energy use in its stores. While critics may debate the motivation underlying Wal-Mart's recent interest in energy efficiency, RMI's outreach coordinator Cory Lowe notes that the institution founded by sustainability giants Amory and L. Hunter Lovins has no problem with a corporation taking green steps to enhance its bottom line:
That, in essence, is RMI’s goal — to show companies that going green can also be a good business decision. "Our mission is to help show people that they can continue to live sort of a modern and comfortable life but do it far better in terms of energy efficiency and cut down their impact," Lowe said. "We’ve been criticized a few times for working for Wal-Mart — but our CEO feels strongly that because Wal-Mart has such a large market share that if they can decide to do things better, it can really have a huge impact."Wal-Mart certainly deserves recognition for putting its money where its mouth is and hiring one of the premier consulting firms for sustainable business development. At the same time, considering RMI's capabilities, we could also argue that they're only going after low-hanging fruit at this point. RMI, for instance, is not advising the company on one of its signature concepts, Smart Growth development, but sticking to the isolated issues of fuel and energy efficiency. We'd love to see the world's largest retailer not only take the lead in doing business more sustainably, but also take a more systematic approach to greening itself, and perhaps even move to the head of the pack in arguing for more sustainable suburban development. While that concept on its face seems like an oxymoron, were Wal-Mart to start designing stores within a Smart Growth framework, suburbs could look like quite different places: there are still plenty of smaller towns that would look hard at their current development patterns were Wal-Mart to start insisting on mixed-use, walkable spaces to locate its stores.In the business world, everything comes down to the dollar figures. "We’re making a business case, especially to these big, big clients," Lowe said. "If we can’t talk in terms of dollars and cents and how it affects their bottom line, we’re not going to be effective."
At the same time, we don't want to risk sounding like those critics that counter each positive step with yet another demand -- that's never been a particularly productive means of engaging with corporations. We do hope, though, that Wal-Mart sees its forays in sustainable development as steps in a journey rather than destinations themselves. And we're definitely optimistic, as we know that the company will certainly bring others along as it progresses down this path. ::NWANews.com via Hugg
I am grateful that Wal-Mart is taking steps to green its operations.
However, I won't be shopping at Wal-Mart unless they do something to improve the way they treat their employees (wages, healthcare, etc.) and they take steps to reduce consumer waste by making quality products that will last instead of selling only throw-away products (even the furniture and electronics they sell are cheap and have short life-spans).
What's next, health insurance?
It seems apparent Wal-Mart has seen that simple greenwashing doesn't win points with the green crowd. Hiring RMI gives their new agenda much more credibility.
I've met people who were at the receiving end of Wal-Mart's ruthless tendencies, so I'm not gonna be rushing to the burbs to load up my car at Wallyworld anytime soon.
But, the proof will be laid bare: If Wal-Mart can embrace green and show a profit, any big retailer can.
Now, if we can just get them to stop meddling in foreign affairs, to care about it's workers (domestic and abroad), and to stop breaking patent law....
Actually the benefits aren't bad, if you're single. I came from NJ, and getting a job with no more than a high school diploma was just about impossible in my area. Get one with any type of benefits and a paycheck higher than minimum wage was all but impossible. $6.75/hr to start may not sound like much, but its an improvement, especially when you consider that the cost of living here in Phoenix is lower than in NJ. No, its not great, but its something.
But, the point here is what can Wal*Mart do to improve the environment, and here's a suggestion I haven't heard. Become a green fuels company. Right now, Murphy Oil Company provides the fuel found in Wal*Mart and Sam's Club gas stations, although their testing doing their own. Why not do biodiesel, ethanol, propane and the like at Wal*Mart fuel stations? The problem with alternate fuels is the lack of stations, but knowing that every Wal*Mart is a green fuel station would certainly help. And being the first in the pool would hand Wal*Mart mucho dinero.
Another idea, why not have a recycling center at every store? Profits can be donated to a charity, this allows Wal*Mart to pat themselves on the back for even more donations without taking more from their pocket. Better still, they can use this to reduce the store's waste stream, saving them on trash removal costs, definately a win-win situation for Wal*Mart.
JavaRod,
I think the Recycling Center idea is actually quite good, because W-M could actually make the recycling of other materials more viable, and even drive down the cost of recycled material.
They already have these thousands of trucks rolling around partially empty much of the time. Simple Idea: Unload some inventory, load up a bin of recyclables. Drop off when returning to a distibution center, and the local recycling vendor picks it up there.
Wal-Mart would have to counter this surplus by creating more demand for recycled material. Getting US manufacturers to use their recycled material for W-M products would be the cherry on the cake.
Good. Let's hope they follow their advice.
It's always amusing to see the drive-by know-it-alls dirtying up the comments section when Treehugger posts positive moves by Wal-Mart.
JavaRod,
You need to send a letter to Bentonville with your ideas.
In my mind, the biggest worry, and also one of the greatest opportunties presented by the greening of WalMart is the impact it will have on organic foods standards.
WalMart is planning to sell organic in all their stores, which means an enormous increase in the amount of organic produce on the market. On the other hand, they plan to charge a very minimal premium for the organic food, which implies all kinds of cost cutting measures. Most worrying is their effort to lobby for reductions in organic standards.
Michael Pollan ("Omnivore's Dilemma", "Botany of Desire") has a great article on the subject. If you'd rather not register at the NYTimes, you can also read the article at my blog.
If you want to stay generally informed and take action on these matters, then register with The Organic Consumers Association.
Grr... the "a href=" tags don't seem to work properly to create links. So, from my last post:
Pollan's NYTimes article:
http://tinyurl.com/jzw3m
My blog, with full text of the article (no registration required):
http://tinyurl.com/gn4or
The Organic Consumers Association:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/
It's always amusing to see the drive-by know-it-alls dirtying up the comments section when Treehugger posts positive moves by Wal-Mart.
No, what's amusing is seeing you go to every post on WalMart and getting your panties in a wad about that.
Actually the funniest part about the recycling idea? I seem to recall on Treehugger that the largest consumer of recycled materials at least in some categories is China as demand is outstripping the supply of raw materials. Now, where does Wal*Mart get most of its stuff from?
As to the truck thing, Wal*Mart's currently recycle cardboard with the bails being removed via one of two methods. Discount stores have a local company come pick up the bails, while Supercenters use a local trucking company (Swift here in Phoenix). One spot at the dock is taken with a trailer, and bails are put in and stacked up until the truck is full, when the trailer is swapped out. It might be better actually to use a local provider for the pick ups in this case, Waste Management for example is set up to move up to 6 dumpsters at one time, making swapping an entire recycling center possible in one trip, and its not even complicated, basically its a flatbed trailer and dumpster mover truck, usually a standard duallie pick up chassis with a hydraulic fork set in place of the bed.
This is a great opportunity, but a huge challenge, since W-M is built on a system and philosophy that is inherently un-green. But beyond that, the economics of revising the W-M system are massively complicated - from the pressure W-M puts on vendors, forcing them into low-cost but unsustainable production strategies, to the trucking industry jobs made available by the unsustainable practice of shipping products from factory to regional hubs to individual W-M stores. Since W-M operates globally, changing the infrastructure of their operations to be more green will have cascading effects on economies at all scales in many countries.
"the largest consumer of recycled materials at least in some categories is China"
That was the little unspoken hint in my recycling suggestion of getting *US manufacturers* to make products from the recycled material, thus eliminating alot of transport of material/products, and creating work for Americans.