Attack of the Green Wal-Martians

As some of you know, I attended Wal-Mart's Sustainable Value Networks meeting down in Bentonville, Arkansas last week.

Overall, the sentiment from non-profit and academic attendees was 'it looks good, but the devil will be in the details.' As some of you can recall, I've cornered a few of you over the last few years with my grand designs for utilizing the reach and scale of Wal-Mart to be harnessed for the common good. As an avid reader of The East Bushistan Report, CEO Lee Scott reached me on my Trio/Blackberry/strange earset gizmo a few months ago, asking me to grizzle his hizzle (green his company, for those not fluent in Snoop). Though not entirely true, this episode more reflects my state of mind at the moment, rather than reality. But I digress...

The company's goals are threefold.

1) To be 100% powered by renewable energy
2) To have zero waste coming out the back of their stores
3) To sell products that are good for both the environment, and their customers

Do I believe them? Are they just going to go from squeezing conventional farmers to squeezing organic farmers? Is this the largest greenwashing project in the history of capitalism? My answers are 'reservedly yes,' 'probably,' and 'I don't think so,' for the following
reasons:

- They have pulled together 14, twenty person stakeholder teams to address every sector of their business
- Their 'Sustainability Team' is only 5 people, because they are incorporating these strategies into the established divisions, rather than 'siloing' this effort with the EHS folks
- They admittedly don't know very much about sustainability, and seem very
willing to listen
- Wal-Mart doesn't take on projects and then do them halfway. They have invested a lot of $$ into this already, and the level of savings from these initiatives is literally off the charts.
- Lee Scott really seems to understand the potential of Wal-Mart to change
the economy for the good
- They have already done a CO2 audit of the entire company, and realize that 90% of the GHG emissions associated with their business is in their supply chain, and are going to be working with their suppliers to bring this number down dramatically.

Perhaps I drank the Kool-Aid (labor-flavored!), but I really believe there's reason to be
encouraged. That is not to say that there won't be a number of detrimental effects down the line, but the company appears to have turned a corner (not a Bush 'we're turning a corner in Iraq,' but a real one...).

Now if they will only apply the same concerted effort to their labor... we'll say, challenges.