Wal-Mart - good or bad?

Featured Debate 8

So a few weeks ago, in the Environmental Capital blog over at the Wall Street Journal, there was one headline that really got people talking:  "Walmart: We Are Not Green." 

Well, of course that quotation from the president and CEO of Wal-Mart, Lee Scott Jr., certainly got used and abused.  Lots of folks took it as a clear indication that Wal-Mart is a terrible giant destroying the world. 

But what about the context of that statment?  This comes from David Roberts over at Grist:

Here's the exact quote, as I transcribed it in my notes (100 percent accuracy not guaranteed):

"It has been positive from a PR standpoint, but one of the things we learned is that we are not sophisticated enough to spin a story -- ultimately, we'd get hammered. We are not out saying we're a green company. We are not green. We have an extraordinary distance to go."

In context, it's clear what Scott was saying. While Wal-Mart's made all kinds of efforts to lighten its footprint, nobody would characterize it as "green," i.e., as having finished the job.

So really...Wal-Mart?  Good or bad?  Terrible giant destroying the world?  Or big company making big strides to lead the industry in a good direction?

To paraphrase Dustin Hoffman in Rainman, Wal-Mart sucks.

I'll give them credit in that Wal-Mart is trying to reduce its environmental footprint, which is good.  And they do make goods affordable for lower income earners, which can also be good.

However, Wal-Mart also drives locally owned shops out of business, which sucks.  And it feeds into our consumerist and wasteful society by offering often cheaply made products at cheap prices.  If you buy 30 cheap tube socks for 10 cents, not only are they going to wear out and be thrown out faster, but it creates the mindset that 'well, this only cost me 3 cents, so it's no big deal to throw it out'.  I think Wal-Mart generally creates a very wasteful mindset, because their products can be replaced so easily.

That doesn't even go into stories about the treatment of Wal-Mart employees, lack of benefits, etc. etc.  Just from an environmental standpoint, the wasteful consumerist mindset created by Wal-Mart is bad.

I don't think my pragmatic, light-ish green tendencies are news to anyone here, but I feel similarly to how I do in our Clorox debate - someone with the resources of a Walmart can effect an unbelievable amount of change if they're properly motivated and incentivized.

One barrier to entry for a lot of green products is their cost and if a distributor like Walmart picks up those products and forces the prices down (which they do), while the margins may be slimmer, adoption will be FAR greater and that's the ultimate goal, right?

The difficult thing is reconciling the goal of distribution of sustainable options vs. the manufacturing and labor practices encouraged by Walmart forcing companies to outsource manufacturing to countries with much more lax civil rights. Not to mention the effects on losing jobs in the US. There was a great article about it in Fast Company a few years ago.

I guess my feeling is that if Walmart is willing to keep making strides, I'm all for it because they really have taken some decent steps and the potential is so tremendous, but they have a long way to go.

I s'pose I should mention that the Fast Company article is quite long...but it's really interesting!

What did he actually say in Rainman??

It's not like people are really taking the "green" quote out of context to suddenly attack Wal-Mart. Everyone KNOWS Wal-Mart is evil. There have been documentaries about how Wal-Mart is evil. Like all the reasons dana1981 pointed out. I think it would take an entire encyclopedia set to list all the reasons that they suck.

It's nice to hope that we could change a huge amount of things by getting Wal-Mart to make what are tiny steps for them, but it's no place to be putting our energy. Balanced against all the ways that they act as a huge immoral despot in people's lives, Wal-Mart's environmental actions amount to no more than greenwashing.

"K-Mart sucks".  Actually, Tom Cruise's character said it first, but Dustin Hoffman is way cooler than Tom Cruise.

Wal-Mart has driven down salaries, and eroded decent, living-wage jobs, particularly in the grocery sector. At one time, people could make a career out of being a supermarket meat cutter, produce manager or bakery manager. They could raise families and buy houses -- With its low wage and part-time hiring practices, Wal-Mart has exerted pressure on other supermarket chains to follow suit in order to compete. The produce manager at my local supermarket, who just retired with a pension, a paid-up house and two university -educated children, will be replaced with an endless roster of short-term, part-time, minimum-wage employees. Good for prices in the short term--catastrophic for society in the long run.

From David Griner over at adfreak.com - they posted some of Walmart's commercials about going green. I don't think they're quite as offensive as the blogger, but I did get a laugh out of his quote, "The ads get extra demerits for smug delivery, forced natural backdrops and a blatant rip-off of Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s beautiful “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

**I had some complications posting all 3 in one post, so I'm reposting separately...

Another:

The third:

I generally agree with the negative issues noted in the previous posts about Wal*Mart.  Where I am in California there is only one near  (There are 5 Costco locations!).   I generally do not shop at WM - I actually have become ill trying to navigate those monsterous buildings.

I do have a few points tho:

1)  WM is so big, and it's production/delivery chain for it's multitude of products so incredibly massive, that in all likelyhood they will always be villanized as not being green.  From nearly disposable $99 lawn mowers, to putting the "little guy" out of business in droves... sigh... I just do not see how they can pull it off with their current business structure.

2)  Being as big as they are - we NEED THEM to change.  We really need to applaud any change they make that is for the better.  If they can sell 200 million CFLs (or even LEDs in the near future) think of the carbon offset that society will reap from that!  If they can reduce packageing on even 50% of their products - that is good.  If they put large solar arrays on most of their locations - great! (I think they should have calculators that show energy stats at each location for the customers to see).  The changes they make are likely to be far reaching and of far-far greater impact than a one-site-only corner store.  I am definatly not a fan of WM, but don't think that chain is going bankrupt so we should maybe encourage them to keep changing for all of our sakes.

3)  For any big store/chain - I am concerned that their boards think that "green" is just another isle to make money from, and not a frame of mind.  Sure, they can sell stuff that is considered green, even market their green intentions.  But if they continue to be blatantly wastefull and business-as-usual in 90% of the store and how they run their business, it reduces all their efforts to simply trying to cash in on green and becomes simple greenwashing...

Mike

I hear you Mike - it's like brent said in the Carrotmob Video (at the beginning, before the crazy musical interlude), "The problem is that corporations will do ANYTHING for money, but what if the solution is that corporations will do ANYTHING for money? Hmmm." They just have SOO much money and power, if harnessed properly they can effect tremendous change.

In Walmart's case, if they disclosed more about the seedy manufacturing, price manipulating practices and made honest, open pledges to make changes, it would be a net positive for the company. It seems like they're trying with all the energy saving pledges and "green" products, but you're right, even more openness about how much actual change is being made would be better.

Well the problem is that without the seedy manufacturing, price manipulating practices, Wal-Mart wouldn't be Wal-Mart.  Namely it wouldn't have had the success that it's had, and it wouldn't have become such a gargantuan chain.  It's the fact that Wal-Mart's seedy practices allow them to price their products so low and thus make them so popular that's allowed the store to be so successful.

If it suddenly changes its practices and becomes a genuinely good company, can Wal-Mart sustain itself?  Or would it be forced to raise its prices, lower its popularity, and collapse in on itself like a black, black hole?

Well I don't know that they can survive doing what they're doing either...outsourced manufacturing and supply won't stay this cheap forever so maybe they can appeal to a broader swath of the market by making some changes for the better.

I don't know, this whole Walmart thing is confusing.  I refuse to step foot in one and I find it hard to keep my mouth shut when the mom's in my community talk about their latest $5 grab from the corporate beast.  I do agree though that they are such a force in the world that we need to applaud when they do make changes for the betterment of the earth and the people.  I get scared though that they will start shifting greener and put all the small guys out of business....like me :(  There is a clear point however that they will no doubt always get their products from the cheapest source which most likely will indicate unfair labour practises and environmentally damaging shipping methods so I guess I will alway have a one up on them in ethics.  They recently demanded that their toys be packaged with 25% less materials....so they can produce less waste...no, rather so that they can ship more at one time.  So do we applaud the fact that they have major influence on how things are being packaged or do we snark at their corporate greed?

Maybe I will end up out of business and working at Wamart one day too?

In some ways, I do have to harken back to what GM's Bob Lutz said (not the "global warming is a crock" bit) - does it really matter why they do it?  Sometimes the important thing at the end of the day is that they do it at all. 

But I do have to say...even if their goal is to ship more toys, at least they're decreasing their transportation carbon footprint per unit!  Take Keetsa mattresses, for example.  They're a small, green mattress company.  But their big thing (beyond using recycled/recyclable materials) is that they can fit 540 mattresses on the same sized truck that carries only 140 traditional mattresses.  And sure.  Without a doubt, that greatly reduces their transportation costs.  And perhaps it even puts a few more pennies of profit in their pockets.  But it also makes a huge difference in their overall emissions as well as in the emissions and gas used for customers to get their mattresses home.  While toys aren't the same as mattresses, Wal-Mart's got to start somewhere, right?

While back in college, I wrote a 20 page paper on how their a pretty big scary, dangerous multi-national corporation, I hope that they will use their size to create positive changes in the industry.  And I hope that they will further green into mainstream affordability. 

And what's more...I hope there will always be consumers who support the small green companies, like you PUREshop, who have really been at the heart of the movement for a long time.  I think there will be.  And at least one thing is certain...I will stay one of those consumers, myself!

That's a really great series of videos!  Thanks for sharing, Morizongreen!

My husband & I stopped shopping at Wal-mart in 2006 after we watched a documentary about the sprawling beast taking over communities and practically forcing small businesses to close.  Although it was hard at first (spending a little extra money purchasing items at other stores) we have adjusted well and have not looked back once.  We feel good about our choice not to shop there and encourage friends and family to shop elsewhere.

If Wal-mart is making strides to go green then I applaud their efforts...but I will not start shopping there.

Buy natural, buy organic, buy local as often as possible.

I have to agree with the side that says WM is a horrible business until it changes drastically.  Putting CFLs and organic cotton tees on the shelves does NOT, in my opinion, make up for the fact that the people that are making this stuff are being exploited, abused, and often mistreated (Google Newsweek's article "Asian Workers Trapped in Servitude") simply because they live in a poor country with low wages.  WM well knows that 99% of its products come from places like that.  They will NOT change that business model because it's exactly what allowed them to grow so big - keeping costs and prices low.  So I refuse to support a company that imports 99% of its products, is happy to sell you substandard quality items, supports companies exploiting people on the other side of the world, and using lax environmental regulations to keep production costs low while environmental tragedy ensues (Google Mother Jones' article "The Last Empire"), encouraging US manufacturers to take their products overseas (Google the article "The Man Who Said No to WalMart"), puts mom-and-pop out of business and then hires their staff for less money and plays the game to make sure they don't qualify for health benefits.  The list of negatives goes on and on, and I can't say they're much better for doing with green products what they do best - following market trends and giving people the cheapest possible options.  The fact that there are some green products now on their shelves is just a business decision.  It does NOT make up for all the evils they support in this world.

I absolutely agree with Mike.  Clearly the small changes don't even begin to make up for larger issues with their business model but by showing them that change is crucial (through supporting businesses that operate with a sustainable, eco- and human-friendly business model), I'm hoping they'll see the light (at least little by little).

And while I do agree with William McDonough that "being less bad is not being good," less bad is a start.

i'm usually very very against wal-mart. however, ( i can't belive i'm saying this) i think they could do some good.

now that consumers are holding companies accountable, it's harder for them to get away with crap. luckily for the internet, when a company does wrong, the whole world can know in a cyber second.

with that being said, if we keep holding them accountable they can do some good. i don't believe they need to keep growing by building newer stores, enough is enough. but i believe the stores that are here can at least bring green products and ideas to those who may not have been introduced to it in the first place. so this is good. we just need to make sure that wal-mart does'nt try to dumb down and lower any standards for organics or fair trade items. money talks and we can't let them get away with lowering anything. we should encourage them to strengthen standards and be the most green.

like gary hirshberg said (ceo of stonyfield yogurt in his book stirring it up) i'm paraphrasing: it's big companies like this that got us into this mess, it's them who has to get us out.

I also like McDonoughs' quote, and agree with Stins that less bad IS a start. They DO have a long way to go! Actually, I'd like to see them scrap their current model and use their wealth to reinvent themselves as an industry standard for BIG BOX GREEN STORES, if that is possible. Personaly, I have rarely entered through their doors. I don't shop there as a rule.  But , a couple of years ago, I needed to match a particular brand of paint ; WM was the only supplier. As I walked through the silding glass doors, my sense of smell was assaulted - the environment reeked of toxic chemicals.  I couldn't get out of there fast enough, and I haven't been back!

So here's a little something to introduce into the debate.  From Treehugger:

Wal-Mart has agreed to help US taxpayers take climate action. Over the next two years, they are sending energy audit teams to 20 State Capitol complexes to help save taxpayers money and help the environment...while the Federal Government equivocates on climate risk. This is by sponsorship of the respective State Governors.

We suggest reading the entire press release issued by the Association of State Governors.

States involved:

• Arkansas
• Connecticut
• Florida
• Iowa
• Kentucky
• Minnesota
• Missouri
• Montana
• Nebraska
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• New Jersey
• Ohio
• Pennsylvania
• Puerto Rico
• South Carolina
• South Dakota
• Tennessee
• Virginia
• West Virginia