Wal-Mart's Eco-efforts - Mainstream Green or Pipe Dream?

I don’t think that the efforts to be green offset the negative it brings into communities and towns.

Although I do feel that it is hard for a mega-giant like WalMart to really be green, this same fact lends them to the possibility of making a big difference. When you have thousands of stores and millions of customers you do a lot of business. On such a large scale even the smallest change can make a big difference.

But, when you are a mega-giant, why go for a small change when you can go big? Why not ask suppliers to reduce packaging (do those cookies really need to be individually wrapped, put in a plastic tray and then wrapped again?). This is just one example of the type of thing that WalMart has to strong arm to make companies (which otherwise might not have reformed) change their ways to a greener design.

Another idea, while I'm at it, is to have them charge for plastic bags while selling canvas or other alternatives at the register (like ikea). They can push it as their effort to reduce the plague of plastic. I know that's unlikely since they're supposed to be the bargain superstore, but it's a dream...

Hi Sami,

This is a great, well written piece.

I am with Lloyd on this one; it is getting tougher to hate Walmart based on their green record. Now, this is different than going after them based on fair trade, or fair labor, where I think you could get some bite.

Much like FedEx, Walmart delivers products that people want very, very efficiently. In fact, they are so good at it they they are huge, and they can take advantage of that hugeness with optimized supply lines, operations research, what have you. Whyzizzit that you never hear about FedEx but always hear about Walmart?

Gee, where to begin, seeing how I used to work for this monster (as a HR manager no less)...

REAL health care for their workers
Not bullying workers into overtime
Making their suppliers (China) ACTUALLY be green
Fair Trade (? as long as it's "fair" to WalMart they assume
it is)
... the list goes on and on. I'll use my old stand by from wizard of oz, walmart IS the wizard, so don't look behind
the curtain Dorthy, you may not like what you see.

Cheers,
Tom-tom

Wal-Mart's stores are designed to make their customers have to walk past more merchandise to get quick trip items, such as milk. It is not very green to design stores that encourage your customers to buy a bunch of crap that they don't even need.

I very rarely go to Wal-Mart but recently went because I wanted to get a magazine that was in no other local store and did not want to pay $4 to have it shipped. Near the entrance of the store they had a display of "green" items such as CFLs and the like. On the display there were cakes that the bakery had made for people to buy to celebrate being green. Three days later a friend asked me to run in there with her and the same cakes sat in the same spot. How is making a bunch of cakes that people have very little desire to buy being green?

Go green Walmart! It will help bring affordable Green to the little people.

With that said:
1) Eliminate plastic bags!
2) Have suppliers reduce packaging. Better yet have suppliers take back all thier packaging to be reused.
3) Go solar. With you installing PV panels the prices will drop and then you can sell the panels in your store for us little people to afford to go solar.
4) Ask your suppliers to go green!
5) Did I mention solar? What about wind energy? Can you sell solar panels and wind turbines??? How about solar chargers for the endless amount of gadgets that we have? And don't just sell them on a single shelf in the back of the store. Put them all over the store and CHEAP!

Walmart can affect the planet. The only question I have is what to you so long Walmart? You are just introducing store brand CFLs. When you should be on the edge and introduce LEDs as a better alternative to CFLs.

Thank you for listening. Now please do it.
(Soap box being put away.)

Don't be fooled, this is all about business. Green is in, and Wal-Mart is jumping on the bandwagon. None of this changes the fact that Wal-Mart exists so that we can all go buy stuff we don't need at low low prices.
If you do need it, go to a real store and buy something locally made. We'll all be better off in the long run.

I agree with Rosie - I was actually just thinking something that she said. I spent a good bit of time in Ireland, and they moved away from plastic bags in (I think) 2003. Now you have to pay 10p for a bag at the shops, but they all sell reusable bags and EVERYONE has them. People just keep them in their cars...it's just what you do...it's not hard!

A store where I live doesn't charge for plastic bags (we're Americans dammit...we have rights....something like that) but they do give a 3cent discount for every reusable bag you bring in. It's not great, but it's something. Maybe if WalMart wouldn't go for charging for bags at least they'd give cash back for reusable ones.

Frankly, I don't believe anything Wal-Mart says, even if their tongue does turn green. This is intended to be used as a great PR ruse at some point while their mobile warehouses still float down our freeways belching diesel soot and their huge big boxes still consume megawatts of electricity, and they still import toxic goods from afar destroying U.S. jobs and communities in the process. Wal-Mart green? Never.

The great debate.
My girlfriend cringes every time I go to WMT.
However I tell her I save more $$ to do more stuff with her. It is still a losing battle.

Yes, I hope they become a major supplier of solar and wind items. i have read somewhere that it is illegal to install them in my area (Brooklyn/NYC) unless a licensed contractor does it. But I would probably set up a guerilla power station or something.

Fair Deal?
I think WMT might be 'better' for the communities it services if more stuff was made in the grand old USA in stead of China and the Far East. All that transportation!!!
(Maybe a big hole could be dug through the center of the earth and the stuff could be gravity shipped from there to here). Anyway, with our falling dollar, it might make sense to start 'Insourcing' or or 'Homesourcing' our products and services. Then all the merchants put out of biz by the big stores could be running manufacturing plants powered by the sun wind and hydro.
Stuff could be rail shipped to major distribution points and trucked out by hybrid and electric trucks.

Who knows?

vsk

I live here in Bentonville AR, AKA Walmartville~ I worked with WM for over 6 years and currently now working on the other side of the fence suppling to WM and Sam's. I give them tons of credit for the efforts that they are doing on being green. Not only did I see these efforts brought to the table and executed in WM now that I'm on the other side, they are asking the same out of us suppliers. We are required to reduce and use earth friendly packaging. Which in turn is forcing our factories in China and other countries to go green too. WM has one of the biggest impacts on humans and the earth. They know this and are embracing it the right way! I'm proude to say I work with WM and respect the good the are doing.

I will be attending the Sustainability Resource Fair today and look forward to being educated more on what I can do with my company to make a bettere impact on life through WM~

Using IKEA as a model, with their "Donate a $1 to plant a tree" campaign, perhaps Walmart can have a "Donate a $1" to impoverished nations, to give back. Or "Donate a $1" to solar, wind technology"

While they are at it, yes, this would be a good time to do a 180 and offer a competitive healthcare plan, a good hourly and paid overtime that will make other companies green with envy.

It is hard for me to put "volume" and "sustainability" in one sentence, so this should be interesting. Walmart has a lot of work cut out for them. I hope this means that Target is ready to step up their game as well. With that said, this is the demographic to educate, so if they do it right, the impact could be very powerful.

That's all.

Any true treehugger would focus on reducing/reusing goods before they buy any non essential items be it from Wal Mart or any other retailer- the fact that WM focuses on cheap rather than quality makes them less than an ideal choice. IF you dont consider the good of the community along with whats right for the environment, then I guess WM might be a good choice for your essential needs shopping (or in some cases your only choice!).

As for the common complaint about retailers designing stores with the milk/dairy in the back of the store as if its some kind of evil plan to get you to purchase more on your trip thru the aisles..... youre a little off base. Most conventional grocery stores are designed with the refrigerated dairy coolers in the back due to milk being extremely heavy,and a big seller- keeping it in the back (closer to most delivery bays) is more effecient for the workers and easier to display rather than dragging crates of milk thru the non-refrig. aisles to fill a display at the front of the store. The fact that it also reduces daily cooling costs and a big saving in installation is a bonus.

So glad this was posted, I was going to take my question to TreeHugger today anyway.

I found a "No Boundaries" brand organic tshirt at a thrift store. Further research into the origin of the shirt led me to the Walmart page where I found they have many organic cotton articles of clothing. What I want to know is could it be only the cotton that was grown organically? Was the garment still put through the decidedly non-organic chemical processes in production? Does anyone know?

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Author's Comment:

Thanks for the question batchild. Just because a shirt is made with organic cotton it does not mean that it hasn't been treated with fairly noxious chemicals, especially in terms of dyes. Having said that, you should be fairly safe with Green Label Organics, who take a fairly aggressive sustainability angle, including low-impact dyes and eliminating PVC and Phtalytes from the printing process. You can find more details here:

http://www.greenlabel.com/

I agree with the article, Wal-mart's green push is a good thing. At the same time, criticism is important, to help define next steps. Sustainability is a state of mind, and getting sustainability is a journey. Wal-mart has a long ways to go, but they're starting the journey and they're actually leading. That's a wonderful thing.

Wal-mart can implement environmental practices that have money-saving benefits -Making more with less is their specialty.

Enrgy efficiency, solar installations, greener parking lots, and so forth.

But bags are my gripe. Wal-mart caters to bargain hunters. Surely plastic bags cost money. Most grocery stores offer a nickel refund for using your own bag. This seems like a natural fit for Wal-mart. It doesn't have to be a costly canvas bag, it can be a used wal-mart bag. Handing fewer bags out will reduce Wal-mart's overhead, and they can pass the savings along.

If Wal-mart puts value (i.e. savings) on responsible consumerism (oxymoron aside), many of its customers will participate. Even if it is only one thing such as reusing bags, Wal-mart's size makes every change huge.

Secondly, get the suppliers to reduce land-fill packaging. It's ridiculous.

Made the WalMart question into a poll (click on my name for the link). Walmart - eco friendly giant or evil giant?

$11.1 Billion

That is how much PROFIT Wal-Mart made in 2006.

Anyone care to wager a guess as to what percentage of that amount was spent on their environmental campaign?

That said, I have to agree with some of the others above. Wal-Mart holds a pretty big club in their hand. If they're serious about this movement than it is certainly a step in the right direction.

"$11.1 Billion

That is how much PROFIT Wal-Mart made in 2006.

Anyone care to wager a guess as to what percentage of that amount was spent on their environmental campaign?"

If companies didn't make decent profits, they wouldn't exist. People with capital would just put their resources in T-bills or index funds and forget about it.

Yeah, Wal-Mart didn't spent all its profits on green stuff, but as long as oil is artificially cheap, as long as carbon emissions don't cost anything, as long as roads and shipping is heavily subsidized, there's only so much they can do.

First, I think that it is irresponsible to state, "While it would be erroneous to call any big-box, pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap retailer sustainable..."

The big box retailer, and all retailers for that matter, drive construction, consumption, and consumer wants more than a site like this that is viewed only by those who have made a decision to make a difference. We need retail to go green - it will help drive down sustainable materials costs.

However, the retailers need to stay focused on the the tripple bottom line: not only material / construction based sustainability, but social and financial sustainability as well. Yes, financial, because if retail can't make money being green it won't happen.

Is WalMart doing enough? Not yet, but they have been working at it for years now. In some cases we need to live through an eveolution - not all change will be through revolution.

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Author's Comment

Thanks for the thoughts Ken. I certainly didn't mean to suggest that Wal-Mart's efforts are not an extremely welcome step in the right direction, as you say. My point was merely that, if you consider the classic definition of sustainability i.e. Meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to do the same (I may be paraphrasing here), then Wal-Mart, and all other big box retailers (and the vast majority of small retailers for that matter) are not there yet. They are making huge steps in the right direction, but they have a long way to go. As you say, it's an evolution.

At the event, Lee Scott and many other WM representatives repeatedly stressed that they are NOT green, and that they are NOT sustainable, but that they are trying hard to get there.

FOLLOW THE MONEY!

The person who mentioned the $11.1 billion annual profit is right on. Most of that profit, by the way, goes directly into the bank accounts of a handful of Walton family members. Those family members fund the worst of the anti-enviroment movement and the worst of the anti-environment politicians.

The amount they are spending on greening is less than pocket change to the people who profit from Walmart. It is basically public relations, and since greenies typically cost much less than PR professionals, it is very cost effective public relations, not to mention being tax deductible!

What a system - they nickel and dime suppliers, forcing them offshore to lowcost-practically-slave labor. The Americans who are now without jobs or are working McDonalds have the joy of saving $10 on a pair of jeans that will fall apart quickly because they are so shoddily made. Of course that American with no job can find work in the Army to fight for our right to the oil it takes to transport those jeans from China.

This is a COMPLETELY CRAZY system.

The only people who win in this system are the Walton family - racking up another couple billion in the bank every year, ready to fund the next round of politicians who can keep their scam going.