They operate by importing huge quantities of cheap goods from China. Their commercial clout means they can squeeze suppliers’ margins on huge orders. But it uses vast amounts of energy to get that stuff to their stores. So cutting their electricity bill helps their bottom line a bit but makes an insignificant dent in their ghg production.

But the most obnoxious effect they have is the destruction of real urban places. All over North America, Main Street has closed – and everyone now drives out to the big box by the freeway. Wal Mart doesn’t deliver because you do that for them. And you miss out on all the urbanity and humanity of casual contact in downtown. Humans are social animals and need physical proximity to each other to survive. WalMart cares nought for that. All it cares about are its huge profits.

Stephen Rees’s last blog post..Campbell promises cheap transit passes to post-secondary students

The energy they provide is always fresh, green and crunchy.

No, but seriously, go BullfrogPower!!!

ioana’s last blog post..Happy 4th Anniversary Love!

Ferry Tales’s last blog post..A different kind of pride

http://makower.typepad.com/joel_makower/2007/10/wal-marts-susta.html

A lot of people dismiss this sort of thing too quickly as greenwashing, but in the case of WalMart and many other companies they really are trying to improve their performance and come up with better solutions. It doesn’t mean they’re “good guys” now, but I believe attempts to improve should be applauded and encouraged instead of taking a black-and-white approach and treating big corporations as pure environmental villains, which is too much in the vein of George Bush’s “you’re either with us or against us” for my taste.

One interesting twist on all this is that WalMart’s attempts to start offering organic food and recycled/recyclable products is apparently creating strains in the system due to the incredible demand that a big-box firm of Wal-Mart’s size can create.

Walmart = High Cost for Low Cost.

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I read somewhere (in an article about supply chains, I think) that getting selected as a supplier by Walmart is a tough and expensive process, both short-term and long-term: They demand very low prices and that next year’s price is lower still. I.e. the supplier is expected to continually reduce their sales price, so they have to reduce costs, so they use cheaper parts and move their production facility from China (too expensive) to Vietnam (still cheap).

Jan Karlsbjerg’s last blog post..Two pilots, two different approaches