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TechnoratiTwo years ago, Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott announced a bold initiative to turn the world's largest corporation green. After numerous delays, the company has finally released a first progress report.
So how much greener are they? To find out, you first need to wade through 40 pages of data on other various and sundry issues. For example, the report boasts that company employees enrolled in a Personal Sustainability Project lost a combined total of 184,315 pounds in 2006 (1.3 pounds per enrollee).
There's also a glowing review of health benefits, even though less than half of employees buy into a company plan that many have criticized as unaffordable on a Wal-Mart paycheck. (The company pays full-time employees an average of $10.76 per hour and refuses to disclose part-timer pay).
The company brags about its charitable giving, highlighting that it has handed out over half a million dollars in one Chicago neighborhood selected as its first Jobs and Opportunity Zone. (The report doesn't mention that Chicago is a hotbed of opposition. Activists have blocked one Supercenter, and in 2006 the mayor had to use veto power to kill a measure that would've required all big box retailers to pay decent wages and benefits.)
But what about the much-hyped environmental goals? For two years, CEO Scott has received laudatory press for his pledge that Wal-Mart will some day be supplied entirely by renewable energy, create zero waste, and sell sustainable products.
The centerpiece of Scott's green initiative has been his promise to reduce global warming pollution from existing stores by 20 percent by the year 2012. A look at the results so far reveals why these indicators are buried in the back of the report. On page 47, we learn that the company's carbon emissions actually increased by nine percent in 2006. On the goal of producing zero waste, the report merely states that a "measurement tool is in development."
To his credit, Scott admits in the report that there is "work ahead of us." However, what he is likely never to admit is that even if he achieved all of his stated goals, Wal-Mart's business model is inherently unsustainable.
The Big Box Collaborative, a loose network of groups committed to transforming the "Wal-Mart Economy," released a damning critique of the company's sustainability initiative in September. With contributions from 23 organizations, the report blasts many of Wal-Mart's efforts to provide "sustainable" products as greenwashing. Food and Water Watch, for example, charges that the seafood certification program, the Marine Stewardship Council, has a record of accrediting fisheries with poor environmental records and questions whether seafood could ever be sourced sustainably on the massive scale Wal-Mart requires.
The bulk of the report argues that Wal-Mart will never be a sustainable company as long as it is a major contributor to sprawl, relies on sourcing products from the other side of the globe, and pursues a business model based on slashing costs to the bone.
The report points out, for example, that the company's global warming goals leave many sources of greenhouse gases off the table, including all the pollution spewed by the company's tens of thousands of supplier factories and the ships that haul all the stuff from China. In total, Wal-Mart is responsible for greenhouse gases that are the equivalent of nearly half the amount produced by the entire country of France, according to analysis by Friends of the Earth and the Institute for Policy Studies.
Wal-Mart also ignores the environmental costs of all the car traffic associated with consumer travel to its stores. Supercenters on town outskirts are accessible mainly by driving, resulting in increased traffic and customers having to travel longer distances for their shopping. The carbon dioxide produced by customers driving to Wal-Mart stores is more than all of its other U.S. greenhouse gas emissions combined, according to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott has said that "We need to be sustainable companies and countries made up of people who live sustainable lives." In reality, the company has done little to improve the lives of its workers the world over.
In the Big Box Collaborative report, WakeUpWalMart.com charges that that no company has done more to feed our nation's health care crisis, while American Rights at Work exposes the company's aggressive interference with union organizing. The International Labor Rights Forum, STITCH, ActionAid International USA, and Agribusiness Accountability Initiative reveal how Wal-Mart has used its market power to cut costs at the expense of workers and producers in the developing world.
Wal-Mart's massive scale also undermines the independent businesses that form the fabric of healthy, sustainable communities. Global Exchange and the Mexican group CILAS look at how the company has hurt communities, jobs and the environment in Mexico, where it is also the leading retailer. Jobs with Justice and the American Independent Business Alliance share first-hand accounts of community impacts and resistance, while Good Jobs First documents how Wal-Mart has strained communities by pocketing massive subsidies - at least $1.2 billion to date.
And while Wal-Mart boasts about being an environmental leader, Corporate Ethics International reveals that two-thirds of the company's campaign contributions in the last election went to candidates who earned failing grades from the League of Conservation Voters.
In short, for Wal-Mart to be considered truly green, it would need to completely overhaul its business model. And that's a fact that's hard to bury in a glossy corporate report.
Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and edited the Big Box Collaborative report "Wal-Mart's Sustainability Initiative: A Civil Society Critique," available here.
17 Comments so far
Show AllFuture: Wal-Mall, Wal-Medical, Wal-church, Wal-school, Wal-University, Wal-USA, Wal-World.
Choice: Gone.
Freedom: Gone.
These coroporate masters will make the old company store look like Ike's on Walton's Mountain.
Thomas J. Comer
normvincent; I agree with you. I wouldn't go into a Walmart and buy anything if everything they sold was priced at one dollar. Principal and ethics SHOULD come first, but too many people don't care.
I would Never step foot in a Walmart, nor any other Corporate Outlet. The only way to bring down Corporate America is to Boycott it. Do not Buy from Corporations any more than is Absolutely necessary. In the end this will happen anyways, as the almighty Dollar is in Free-Fall as we speak.
Lee scott must fancy himself as one of Santa's little helpers. lets see if he shows up with christmas presents in our neighborhood ghetto's, where many of us live.
Wal-Mart is the retail corporate roll model for the destruction of a decent standard of living for at least 21% of our population now working in the retail sector. no one making $10.76hr on the floor of any wal-mart or sams club in this area. most workers are part-time and at the mercy of wal-marts computer programs to maximize worker productivity at peak hrs(now the standard in Retail corps), then send 'em home to starve when they are no longer needed. keeps costs down and profits up.they strangle their competitors and vendors. wal-mart pays as they sell.no sale, vendor doesn't get paid. Don't like it..don't do bus with walmart!
many of you know that they don't pay Mexican kids to work as baggers and carry outs in Mexico(19,000 kids). they work for tips..wal-mart out of the goodness of their little big cold hearts sees them doing a public service by keeping the little varments off the street.
the only green walmart knows is the color of the rapidly falling green back, as prices continue to rise on energy, food,healthcare..as the saying goes..there's a high cost for low prices. see ya..
HI GOLDDOGS, you got it, they lock up rifle and pistol ammo, but one could purchase a 12 gage shotgun, then grab a box or two of the shells stacked right there near the counter and rob the joint. Or worse yet, a nut case could start shooting everyone in sight. As far as being GREEN goes, that's just PR hype.
Green? What of the massive amounts of "weed and feed" (lawn fertilizer with herbicide) Grub-x lawn Pesticides/Fungicides, Vegetable garden Pesticides, household Pesticides. etc. that they still stock?
GREEN MY ASS
Here is an example of Walmart thinking....
They lock away folding pocket knives in a cabinet, put pictures of them on top. Yet 8 feet behind the cabinet there is tens of thousands of rounds of GUN ammunition out in the open on shelves. Nowhere within 200 ft can you find an employee. The only thing between the ammo an a customer with an empty gun is a 2-1/2 ft high locked swinging gate. In the cooking section, 4,6,8,10 inch long chef's knives are encased in flimsy cardboard or plastic packaging hanging on a hook.
Walmart is dangerous the this planet, people, flora and fauna.
The power of suggestion is powerfull to Walmarts dumbed down customers still groggy from the morning cartoons and re-runs of GW Bush's other favorite show- "the Dukes of Hazard"
The only thing Green is what the customers leave behind.
In spite of other things, Hillary was a very good member of the Wal-Mart board. Things went downhill there after she left and Sam died.
Wal-Mart is a giant outlet for products made in China. They use plastic bags for your merchandise at the long lines at the 13 checkout lanes, eight of which are not open. The milk they sell is cntaminated with chemicals. Of course they are not the only major store that are outlets for Chinese made products. ___ Most are now.
And on whose board did Hillary sit while still a member of the Rose Law Firm?
The selfsame WalMart.
Like "since 1492" said: globalization and corporatization at its worst. I'll go without before I ever shop at a Walmart again. Put the bastards out of business by not setting foot inside the doors. And how do you like the way their own version of Homeland Security carefully checks your reciept and merchandise before they'll let you leave? In effect they're accusing all of their loyal customers of shoplifting by doing so. The last time I did shop in the Santa Fe abomination, I threw the reciept at the company pig and walked out. Nobody has to put up with crap like that. Down with corporatism! I watch financial channels sometimes, just hoping the N.Y. Stock Exchange collapses and every CEO ends up in a breadline. It will take another depression for Americans to snap out of their brain-dead states and realize what their country has become. All the great social programs were born of the depression.
I don't shop at Walmart, but I went to the local one two weeks ago to see if I could find "green" products. I found a floor mat made from recycled tires and some healthy food products hidden in the rest of the crappy food. I couldn't even find recycled paper products ! I wasn't impressed. I hope that they do become "greener", but I won't hold my breath waiting.
Wonder what PJD had in mind to say. Maybe it was "No comment."
It truly is amazing that Wal-Mart has grown to be such a global power and such a global polluter. But I guess it's not amazing that Wal-Mart has tried to put such a positive face on what it is that they do. I wonder how well-paid their spin-doctors are? And if they have a company-provided health plan?
Wal-Mart is the cancer of our society. This is the type of corporatism that is destroying out political, social, environmental, and economic systems.
A company of this size should not be allowed to operate unless all of it's employees can enjoy the basic needs of life.
Including, but not limited too, a fair market wage, healthcare, and job security.
Boy Regan sure opened Pandora's box!!
~Future~
It's all PR to sell themselves as responsible. Nothing could be farther from the truth. WalMart is the face of globalization, corporatism at it's worst. Profits must come before resources, whether natural or human.
Hoa binh
"Your neighborhood" Wal-Mart store, as it has taken to characterizing itself (as if it were a folksy little Mom and Pop operation) is also bragging through advertising how many of its "associates" now can "qualify" for health care. Like so many large corporations they believe in bullshit, that saying they're neighborly or green or concerned about social justice is the same thing as actually being so. The fact that, as a society, our bullshit detectors have been so overwhelmed by the huge quantity of dazzling imagery that what critical faculties we once might have had have been stunned into acceptance of nearly any assertion does not bode well for our near future.