One Step Forward, Many More To Go

April 19th, 2006 by Vihar Sheth
Posted in Environment, Responsibility, Society

Grist recently interviewed Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott about the company’s relatively shocking move to join leading energy executives in their call for mandatory caps on greenhouse-gas emissions. I’m an outspoken critic of Sprawl-Mart but tried to be as unbiased as possible when reading this piece. Lee Scott seems to have his head screwed on properly, to some degree, when it comes acknowledging this company’s ability to impact the global environment. Granted these are only words, but Scott’s intentions seem good, if not for just Wal-Mart but the environment too. According to the article:

In October, Scott announced a preposterously ambitious goal to transform Wal-Mart into a company that runs on 100 percent renewable energy and produces zero waste. Since then, he has impressed greens with specific commitments to cut the corporation’s greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 percent over the next seven years, double the fuel efficiency of its truck fleet within 10 years, reduce solid waste from U.S. stores by 25 percent in the next three years, and double offerings of organic foods this spring, selling them at prices more affordable to the masses.

When Grist asked what Scott’s motivation was to make this move he responded:

I think two things happened. One, as we look at our responsibility as one of the world’s largest companies, it just became obvious that sustainability was an issue that was going to be more important than it was, let’s say, last year, and the years before. I had embraced this idea that the world’s climate is changing and that man played a part in that, and that Wal-Mart can play a part in reducing man’s impact. We recognized that Wal-Mart had such a footprint in this world, and that we had a corresponding part to play in sustainability.

On a personal level, as you become a grandparent — I have a granddaughter — you just also become more thoughtful about what will the world look like that she inherits. So I think it was a confluence of both the personal side and the business imperatives that at least drew me to be interested in it.

This is the first time I remember Wal-Mart acknowledging its impact on society in manner that didn’t solely involve the mantra of lower prices. Its strategy of barreling through society with its head down is backfiring, and I’m happy to hear the company has noticed. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that direct pollution and waste isn’t Wal-Mart’s only negative contribution to the planet. Catalyzing urban, suburban and exurban sprawl is wasteful in and of itself. Even if the company “greens” its operations, it still promotes distant living and overuse of the automobile. If Wal-Mart can cut a portion of its waste as a company but still spurs cookie-cutter neighborhoods in the distant suburbs of all the metropolitan areas in the U.S. (not to mention other countries), I’m fairly certain the waste and inefficiency created by expanding basic services to ever-distant residents will not be offset. You can operate greenly, but if you do it 50 miles from the urban center of a city a lot of gas has to be burned for consumers to benefit. Another downside of its sprawl is the cultural impact of homogenizing populations, the detrimental effects of which are growing and more evident every day.

Wal-Mart does a lot more than just create an exorbitant amount of garbage - some of which is good, much more of which is bad. Greening its operations is undeniably a step in the right direction. A few million more and we might be back to from where we came.

green | rising