Monday May 29, 2006

Walmart goes green - hell freezes over

Can You Still Hate Wal-Mart?
It's a shockingly eco-friendly plan from the world's most toxic retailer. Did hell just freeze over?

thewatt.com -> sfgate.com :

Sometimes you just have to let the possibility breathe. Take Wal-Mart, the most famously offensive, town-destroying, junk-purveying, labor-abusing, sweatshop-supporting, American-job-killing, soul-numbing, seizure-inducing, hope-curdling retailer in the known universe, moving upward of $300 billion in cheap mass-produced slurm every year. There has been very little good to say about this most voracious and powerful of low-end, trashy retailers. Until now. As eco-blog Treehugger mentions in its latest Wal-Mart roundup (and as the New York Times later discussed in its huge "Business of Green" section last week), it seems that back in October, Wal-Mart's president, Lee Scott, delivered a "secret" speech to employees about "21st Century Leadership," in which he outlined a whole slew of what can only be called truly remarkable and potentially world-altering agenda items to help ensure the future health of the world's biggest shopping hell.

There was talk of stores eventually being supplied with 100-percent renewable energy. Talk of ultimately creating zero waste, of pledging to reduce packaging materials across the board and create more recyclables and replace PVC packaging in all Wal-Mart branded items with more eco-friendly materials. And when you're talking megatons of plastic, that's saying a lot. It gets better. Wal-Mart has already committed to selling 100-percent sustainable fish in its food markets. They are already experimenting with green roofs, corn-based plastics and green energy (which is now used to power four Canadian stores, for a total of 39,000 megawatts, amounting to what some estimate is the single biggest purchase of renewable energy in Canadian history). Is this remarkable? Groundbreaking? Utterly confounding? Well, yes and no.

Like any giant company suddenly "embracing" the green initiative, Wal-Mart's rationale for all of this, of course, has absolutely zero to do with any sort of deep concern for the planet (though it does make for good PR), and has absolutely everything to do with the corporation's rabid manifesto: cost-cutting and profit. The reason Scott promised that Wal-Mart will double the fuel efficiency of their huge truck fleet within a decade? Not to save the air, but to save $300 million in fuel costs per year. The reason they aim to increase store efficiency and reduce greenhouse gasses by 20 percent across all stores worldwide? To save money in heating and electrical bills, and also to help lessen the impact of global warming, which is indirectly causing more violent weather, which in turn endangers production and delivery and Wal-Mart's ability to, well, sell more crap. Ah, capitalism. Seems Wal-Mart has realized one vital maxim that so many fundamentalist right-wing capitalist GOPers have so far failed to grasp: The apocalypse is just really bad for business.

It's the bizarre and surprising case of the greening of Wal-Mart, and it's far from perfect. But there can be no denying it's a start, and a shockingly significant one. Because here's the kicker: As goes Wal-Mart, so goes an enormous chunk of the retail and manufacturing sectors. They may not have any more heart, they may be doing it for less than luminous reasons - but who cares? If evil Wal-Mart can go green, anyone can. Isn't that good news? I mean, sort of?

(2006-05-29 13:10:18 SGT) [Env] Permalink Comments [1]

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