The Impossibility of a “Green” Wal-Mart
From Grist.com:
Keep Your Eyes on the Size
The impossibility of a green Wal-Mart
With its recent flurry of green initiatives, Wal-Mart has won the embrace of several prominent environmental groups. “If they do even half what they say they want to do, it will make a huge difference for the planet,” said Ashok Gupta of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Environmental Defense, meanwhile, has deemed Wal-Mart’s actions momentous enough to warrant opening an office near the retailer’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. “If [we] can nudge Wal-Mart in the right direction on the environment, we can have a huge impact,” said the organization’s executive vice president, David Yarnold.
Wal-Mart’s eco-commitments are not without substance. The two most significant are a pledge to make its stores 20 percent more energy efficient by 2013, which will cut annual electricity use by 3.5 million megawatt-hours, and a plan to double the fuel economy of its trucks by 2015, which will save 60 million gallons of diesel fuel a year.
Acting with unusual transparency, Wal-Mart has even published a benchmark calculation of its carbon footprint [Excel]. The company estimates that its U.S. operations were responsible for 15.3 million metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2005. About three-quarters of this pollution came from the electricity generated to power its stores.
This cannot be dismissed as greenwashing. It’s actually far more dangerous than that. Wal-Mart’s initiatives have just enough meat to have distracted much of the environmental movement, along with most journalists and many ordinary people, from the fundamental fact that, as a system of distributing goods to people, big-box retailing is as intrinsically unsustainable as clear-cut logging is as a method of harvesting trees.
Here’s the key issue. Wal-Mart’s carbon estimate omits a massive source of CO2 that is inherent to its operations and amounts to more than all of its other greenhouse-gas emissions combined: the CO2 produced by customers driving to its stores.
Read the rest of this story ...
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, March 29 | 12 comments | Permalink
Revisiting the Wal-Mart Effect: Sustainability, Detergent and Retail
Wal-Mart’s effect on the retail industry and suppliers remains despite slowing growth in same store sales. However, Wal-Mart can change industry habits with both positive and negative consequences. There is little question of how Wal-Mart can shift entire industries.
While Wal-Mart’s supposed green policy, Sustainability 360, is a bit hollow without a comprehensive change in company development policies, the Wal-Mart effect has been present here as well. While much attention is drawn to the energy conservation elements Wal-Marts greening campaign, it is with detergents where the Wal-Mart effect is having the largest impact.
For example, the entire detergent industry is being forced to green under the auspices of Wal-Mart attempting to reduce the amount of toxics in its stores. There are two particular instances where the effect is especially visible. One is with regards to a particular product, and the other is with the industry as a whole.
Read the rest of this story ...
Posted by Research Team on Thursday, March 08 | 26 comments | Permalink
Battle-Mart 101
Anyone can fight Wal-Mart from coming to or expanding in a local community. Download the Battle-Mart primer, our printable guide to fighting Wal-Mart locally. In it you’ll find tactics and strategies to stop a Wal-Mart development plan, as well as advice from past site fighters and SprawlBusters founder Al Norman. As Norman writes in his introduction,
Some of the best people I have met in my travels are people who had no formal background in community organizing. They will say, “I’m just a housewife,” or “I just own a small business in town.” And then they will go out and blow the opposition away.
- Click here (PDF) to download the Battle-Mart Primer
- Click here to visit Battle-Mart, Wal-Mart Watch’s online guide to fighting Wal-Mart in your community.
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, March 05 | 1 comments | Permalink
The Beef With Wal-Mart Meats
From Tiger Weekly:
Many consumers who frequent the local area Wal-Marts purchase their meets in pre-packaged containers; never able to see what they’re actually buying. Upon inspecting these meats, you might be surprised to see just how much what’s on the inside really counts.
It seems convenient to have pre-packaged meats that can be grabbed off the shelf without waiting for a butcher to weigh it out, wrap it, then put that little sticker on it, but at what cost does this convenience come? Some buyers are noticing some strange things about the meat they bring home.
“When I bought [the ground beef] at the store, it was bright red and pretty healthy looking,” said Devin Bourgeon, a senior in economics, “but when I got home to make burgers, the inside of the meat was brown as if it had already been cooked.”
The term used to describe the process which causes this is “modified atmosphere packaging,” which is a fancy way of saying that they’ve replaced the oxygen in the packages with other gases, including carbon monoxide, in order to eliminate the need for butchers and save money buying “case-ready” meats from their suppliers.
- Click here to read more about Wal-Mart meat.
Posted by Russ Fagaly on Monday, March 05 | 30 comments | Permalink
Wal-Mart, Monsanto On Indo-U.S. Agriculture Initiative Board
From The Hindu:
The United States-based multinationals, Wal-Mart and Monsanto, are on the board of the Indo-U.S. Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture Research and Education. It will set the agenda for collaborative farm research with Indian laboratories and agricultural universities.
In India, the universities on their own and through Krishi Vigyan Kendras serve as extension agencies for farmers on the field and have a wide reach.
Read the rest of this story ...
Posted by Vasudha Desikan on Friday, February 23 | 0 comments | Permalink
Please, Don’t Smell the Roses…
Wal-Mart has been a major factor in the shift to foreign locations for many products, but this time a year a key product should be remembered: cut flowers. Cut flowers while they are perceived as a benign and beautiful are often an unsustainable and toxic product, especially when purchased at a Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart has been a major factor in the push for foreign produced flowers, especially flowers originating from Columbia and China. The U.S. has strict import guidelines that state that flowers must be insect free upon entering the country. However, there are no restrictions with regards to what pesticides may be used on the flowers coming into the United States. As a result the floral industry uses the highest amount of pesticides in agriculture.
This often results in flowers containing pesticides that have long been banned in the United States because of toxicity. In addition to the types of pesticides, the amount of pesticides that are on flowers arriving in the United States from foreign destinations can be as high as 50 times what is allowed in food.
While domestic suppliers use a significant amount of pesticides, the use of pesticides is regulated by the EPA and other government agencies. Banned pesticides, which are often highly toxic, are not used in domestic flower production. Producers in China and Columbia have no regulatory oversight with regards to the chemicals they use in flower production.
Read the rest of this story ...
Posted by Research Team on Wednesday, February 14 | 2 comments | Permalink
Does Wal-Mart Really Support The Environment?
From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
Companies’ support goes against the environment
By Mari Margil
Guest ColumnistLast month, ten major companies — including BP, DuPont, Florida Power & Light and General Electric — signed onto a joint policy proposal aimed at reducing global warming emissions. Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer and the biggest private user of electricity in the U.S., also signed on in support. As global warming concerns continue to heat up, it would seem to be welcome news.
But it’s far too soon to feel cozy about those companies’ new stance on the environment.
Many of the companies have a long record of making political contributions to members of Congress who consistently vote against environmental protections and, in particular, efforts to curb global warming. Also, many supported President Bush, who has rejected the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to curb global warming emissions, and who has not taken any meaningful action on global warming.
In the case of Wal-Mart, my organization recently released a report looking at the company’s political contributions to congressional candidates. Wal-Mart’s PAC is the third-largest corporate political action committee in the U.S. and the largest PAC in the retail industry. During the 2006 electoral cycle, Wal-Mart contributed more than $1.7 million to federal candidates, other PACs and political parties.
Read the rest of this story ...
Posted by Russ Fagaly on Tuesday, February 13 | 5 comments | Permalink
How Wal-Mart Development Impacts Transporation
As Wal-Mart focuses on “greening” their supply chain it is important to note the effects of their supercenter development on local traffic, and the macro effects of this local traffic on global climate change.
Wal-Mart prefers to build their stores where they can get the largest lots and the cheapest land. This frequently places their stores on the outskirts of municipal borders. Generally speaking Wal-Mart supercenters can only be effectively reached by automobile because they are sited away from municipal centers. Wal-Mart’s supercenters by their very nature create a heavy amount of traffic, when a heavy amount of traffic is shifted away from a municipal center, this creates transportation patterns that were not originally envisioned when most American towns and cities were first designed.
While decentralizing commercial business districts, Wal-Mart puts a heavy emphasis on large parking lots and the placement of the stores takes away transportation options. Wal-Mart supercenters are often located in places where it is extremely difficult to walk to.
Because Wal-Mart’s supercenters are so decentralized with regards to municipal planning, and because they do create such a heavy amount of traffic, in some towns Wal-Mart supercenters create traffic problems for the entire town. This increases the vehicle miles traveled and the amount of time spent in a vehicle for residents.
The environmental and energy consequences come from increased fuel usage and carbon emissions that come from more people spending more time in their cars traveling, either because they are taking trips to the store or because of the traffic that is generated from people taking trips to the store. Since most stores are open 24 hours, the negative effect on traffic patterns has an effect every hour, both day and evening.
Read the rest of this story ...
Posted by Research Team on Wednesday, February 07 | 2 comments | Permalink
View Wal-Mart Watch's videos on YouTube