Friday Blog Round-Up: Sustaining Sustainability Edition

SUSTAINING THE SUSTAINABILITY HYPE
Lee Scott’s speech to Wal-Mart suppliers on Wednesday stirred up the environmental community, with bloggers and reporters weighing in on the company’s new sustainability initiatives. More talk is not the same as more action, but everyone wanted to talk about the talk, nonetheless.

Wal-Mart set to change the world [BloggingStocks]

Scott’s comments were outside what most companies would be comfortable saying about changing the basic behavior of its customers, but Wat-Mart may be big enough to bring down healthcare costs for hundreds of thousand of people by dropping prices on generic drugs. By making its electronics products more energy efficient Wal-Mart could have an impact on overall electricity use. It does sell enough consumer goods to potentially do that. According to the company, it is even in talks with car-makers to see if its can be of help building and marketing hybrids.

Scott Glee: Wal-Mart CEO outlines lofty green goals [Grist]

The company wants to double its sales of merchandise that help consumers improve home energy efficiency, is in talks with automakers about selling electric or hybrid cars, and could even set up windmills or solar panels in its parking lots to allow customers to recharge with renewable energy. “It’s a good vision,” says Gwen Ruta of green group Environmental Defense. “Now we need to make it a reality.”

Note: Writing on the Wal points out that Scott never actually said the company’s planning to sell hybrid cars. Wal-Mart hasn’t done much to correct this misconception, it seems.

After the jump, more on Wal-Mart’s attempt to “green up” its act, the company raises health care enrollment by 2%! and the magazines now available at your local Wal-Mart store.

Are Wal-Mart’s green efforts really about the environment? Jonathan Tasini points out that Wal-Mart has used this marketing strategy before (via Huffington Post):

As a global economic marauder, Wal-Mart knows exactly how to assess and conquer markets, largely by squelching or dividing its opposition. When the alliances between labor, environmentalists and consumer groups first formed several years ago, I, and others, wondered how such an alliance would hold together. Eventually, someone would crack and break, embracing the Beast because it offered some sort of change that appeared to be healing the grave damage created by the Beast’s business practices.

24/7 Wall Street points out that Wal-Mart’s eco-initiatives won’t necessarily cut costs, but that taking a socially responsible route might make a big difference in a year of economic hardship.

The United States Of Wal-Mart [24/7 Wall Street]

By saying that it is big enough and strong enough to shape the economy for its customers, Wal-Mart is also sending a signal to other mammoth US firms. Take it on the chin because the economy is bad or take control over the factors that you can control to save your business. Wal-Mart may not do well in 2008 but it is willing to go down fighting.

Wal-Mart’s Hybrid Strategies [Motley Fool]

Maybe Wal-Mart has seen the light. The retailer is known for playing hardball with suppliers on price, but it has also shown a recent interest in environmental initiatives. Many critics have had to grudgingly agree that huge companies like Wal-Mart and McDonald’s can bring about some notable—and sometimes downright progressive—changes, not only in their stores but also through their supply chains.

Sustainablog is planning to write a series about the speech, which we look forward to reading. The first piece in the series discusses the company’s enegy plans.

Wal-Mart’s “Company of the Future”: Energy [Sustainablog]

Energy savings have already played into the company’s attempts to transform itself (and, admittedly, its image). From a business perspective, this makes sense: energy’s an expense. Scott’s focus in this speech, though, wasn’t so much on the company using energy more efficiently itself, but on helping customers save energy:

Let me ask you this: What if we extended our mission of saving people money so they can live better - to saving people money on energy? We believe we can do this. Wal-Mart can help our customers use less energy and spend less on energy.

WAL-MART’S “IMPROVED” MAGAZINE SELECTION NOW AVAILABLE

Much to the dismay of the publishing industry, Wal-Mart announced last week that it will be cutting over 1,000 magazine titles from its stores. Folio writer Mark Newman went to a Wal-Mart in his hometown in Alabama to check out the new and improved selection. It wasn’t pretty. If the image above isn’t indication enough, there were a lot of hunting and weighlifting mags, several women’s glossies but pray few newsweeklies.

Blogging from Wal-Mart’s Magazine Rack [Folio]

The biggest surprise to me - and the biggest amount of real estate on the newsstand - was taken over by puzzle books. Crosswords, Find-a-Word, Word Seek, Sudoku took up an entire shelf on one of the racks with 50 different titles alone! I was also surprised not to see any faith or religious-themed magazines, considering Jackson is the first notch of the Bible Belt. Another notable omission was the lack of Spanish language magazines such as Latina or People en Espanol. The Hispanic population has drastically increased in recent years and this is a population that is being totally ignored.

Introducing Your Average Deep South Wal-Mart Magazine Rack [Gawker]

Dear Manhattan - meet the rest of the country. Or at least, the lucky titles still surviving at a Wal-Mart in rural Alabama, visited this weekend by Folio. Last week, the superstore cut from its shelves more than 1,000 magazines, including the New Yorker and Better Homes and Gardens. Happy hunting, folks. Or flexing. Or both!

HEALTH CARE, DRUGS AND WAL-MART’S GUINEA PIGS
Wal-Mart announced this week that the number of employees using its health care plan is up! After some much-publicized revisions, the company managed to raise enrollment a whopping two percent!

Symposium: The elephants in the corner. [Writing on the Wal]

When I read Lee Scott’s speech yesterday last night for the first time, I thought, “Man, he’s either going to save the world or is completely off his rocker.” Then I remembered that this is Wal-Mart. He’s not really serious. How do I know? There’s Wal-Mart’s past record for one thing. Anybody remember when Lee Scott stood up next Andy Stern of SEIU and said they were going to bring about universal health care? I do. Now Wal-Mart is going to profit off our broken healthcare system.

Wal-Mart unveils employee health care participant information [That’s Fit]

Wal-Mart did state that 9.7 percent of its U.S. employees reported receiving government-sponsored health care coverage. To Wal-Mart critics, that points to wages that are too low for many employees to even afford health insurance through the retailer’s programs.

Both BloggingStocks and Brave New Films point out that while enrollment numbers might be up, that doesn’t mean more people have access to quality care.

Wal-Mart Releases 2008 Healthcare Enrollment Numbers - Wal-Mart Watch Responds [Brave New Films]

To get a plan with a $700 deductible and $4000 out-of-pocket medical expenses still costs $7000 a year and the average Wal-Mart employee makes approximately $20,000 a year.

Nicely done. I think there was a movie that discussed this topic in detail...Hmm, what was that name of it again?

Wal-Mart says 50% of its workforce enrolled in its health plan [BloggingStocks]

The percentage of Wal-Mart workers with no health insurance dropped from 9.6% to 7.3%. That compares favorably to the 15% of full-time workers nationwide who lack health insurance.

This makes good PR for the company, but take it with a grain of salt. Wal-Mart offers a number of different health plans, some of which offer very little coverage: Wal-Mart does not break down which of its plans enrolled how many workers.

In other words, a large portion of those 50% who have health insurance could, metaphorically, have a plan that entitles them to seven leeches in the event of a serious illness.

But that wasn’t the only news in Wal-Mart’s health care plans. In his aforementioned speech from Wednesday, Lee Scott announced plans to up the company’s involvement in prescription drug benefits, ultimately hoping to increase its share in that market and, perhaps, even cut costs by getting suppliers to use the company’s drug plan. That’s the kind of evil genius you just don’t see much anymore, folks.

Wal-Mart Tries Pharmacy Benefit Management [Wall Street Journal Health Blog]

Wal-Mart is wading deeper into health-care, testing the waters in the lucrative business of managing companies’ prescription drug benefit programs. CEO Lee Scott said yesterday the company is piloting a program to help “select employers...manage how they process and pay prescription claims,” the WSJ reports.

Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Friday, January 25, 2008