Is It Time to Start Shopping at Wal-Mart?

Al Gore thinks it is. As Grist Magazine reports, Gore recently took his global warming message to Arkansas and got a warm reception from corporate executives. In turn, he lauded the company's efforts to turn green:

Picture Al Gore standing in a modest auditorium deep in America's heartland before an exultant crowd of Wal-Mart employees, comparing their campaign to lighten the company's environmental footprint to the Allies' righteous struggle in World War II. This after Rev. Jim Ball, head of the Evangelical Environmental Network, likened the giant retailer's greening efforts to the work of Jesus Christ.

This strange scene unfolded last week in Bentonville, Ark., and Muckraker was there to witness it. The occasion was an environmental strategy meeting of some 800 Wal-Mart execs, managers, suppliers, and partners, where the heads of the corporation's various divisions -- from seafood and textiles to transportation and packaging -- outlined their respective green agendas.

The assembled employees did high-energy renditions of the Wal-Mart cheer, complete with fist-raising, grunting, and even a group wiggle. "Gimme a W! Gimme an A! Gimme an L! ... Whose Wal-Mart is it? Who's No. 1?" CEO H. Lee Scott pumped his team up further by calling Wal-Mart's newfound environmental focus a "higher purpose." There was also a rare appearance from company chair Rob Walton Jr. -- son of Wal-Mart's legendary founder and, as it happens, a member of Conservation International's board -- who beamed, "I love, love hearing the progress that is being made."

Mid-afternoon brought a screening of An Inconvenient Truth; more than a few audience members could be seen dabbing teary eyes as the documentary drew to a close. Then the entire crowd erupted into a standing ovation when the lights came back on and Gore trotted up to the stage, Tipper in tow.

"That's a larger round of applause than we gave for Wayne Newton!" joked Scott while introducing Gore, who, in turn, showered the audience with reciprocal cheer: "Doesn't it feel good to have this kind of [environmental] commitment? Don't you feel proud?"

Sporting a curiously thick Southern drawl, Gore heaped praise on Wal-Mart's green goal-setting. His Allies analogy was particularly striking: "Look at what [the Allies] did with their victory. They found after winning that they had gained the moral authority and vision to lift up from their knees our defeated adversaries ... And by taking this climate crisis on frontally and making this commitment, you will gain the moral authority and vision as an organization to take on many great challenges."

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The pairing up of Gore, this season's It Boy in Hollywood and other left-leaning circles, and Wal-Mart, the goliath retailer loved in red states and loathed in blue cities, seems bizarre on its face -- and couldn't have happened before this year. But now, with Gore trying to spread climate awareness beyond the choir and Scott trying to give Wal-Mart a high-profile green makeover, the match actually makes sense.

Last October, Scott pledged to transform his sprawling company, which employs 1.8 million people worldwide and ranks No. 2 on the Fortune 500 list, into a lean green machine powered exclusively by renewable energy, producing zero waste, and selling sustainable products. Those goals are so lofty they sound downright deluded, but Scott has followed them up with specific, seemingly achievable commitments and timetables. He aims, for example, to reduce Wal-Mart's total greenhouse-gas emissions 20 percent by 2012, and invest $500 million in environmental improvements each year.

Andy Ruben, Wal-Mart's vice president for corporate strategy and sustainability, reasons that the 100 percent renewable-energy goal could be met largely with greater efficiencies. "We can use 70 percent less energy to do what we're doing today, and supply the rest with renewables," Ruben suggested at last week's meeting.

The gathering brought forth more green goals from divisions throughout the company. In the area of seafood, Wal-Mart is working with the World Wildlife Fund to identify, and purchase exclusively from, sustainable fisheries. It's moving toward organic cottons in its apparel and bedding lines. The jewelry division is developing a sustainable certification program for the gold mines it works with, and exploring outlets for recycled gold. The transportation division is planning to double the efficiency of its truck fleet, one of the largest in the U.S., within a decade. The construction division is developing prototype stores that are 30 percent more energy-efficient than current stores, and the company also aims to improve efficiency at existing stores by 20 percent. The packaging department is working to eliminate its waste stream by 2015, using reusable, recycled, and biodegradable containers.

The produce division is ramping up its organic offerings, and plans to move toward more local farm purchases in order to save money on truck fuel costs and refrigeration. Ron McCormick, an executive in Wal-Mart's produce division, said he plans to purchase a broader variety of produce based on what's available in each region, rather than insisting on a "monoculture" of produce at stores nationwide. "Our whole focus is: How can we reduce food-miles?"

These internal aims aside, Scott said Wal-Mart's most meaningful environmental impact will be in nudging its 60,000 suppliers toward more eco-friendly practices -- working with them, for instance, to reduce packaging, which in turn would mean fewer raw materials consumed, less energy expended in transit, and, in the end, lower prices for consumers. "Ninety percent of the impact Wal-Mart can have is on the supply chain," he said.

Wal-Mart's Ruben, who this spring testified before a Senate committee in favor of federal greenhouse-gas regulations, also pointed out that while Wal-Mart is responsible for emissions equivalent to 23 million tons of CO2 a year, there are a whopping 220 million tons of annual greenhouse-gas emissions in the company's supply chain.

Scott's grand goal, as he explained it in an interview with Grist this spring, is to "democratize sustainability." To wit: He wants to use Wal-Mart's unparalleled economies of scale to put everything from organic T-shirts to compact fluorescent light bulbs to pesticide-free foods within reach of the masses.

Wal-Mart has an enormous economic footprint and it has enormous influence on the culture of American business. If they implement this plan they should be commended and emulated. But as this Grist article written by John Sellers, president of the Ruckus Society and Barbara Dudley, former executive director of Greenpeace USA points out, not everyone is so impressed:

Yes, Adam Werbach, founder of the Sierra Student Coalition, youngest president of the Sierra Club, author, filmmaker, and self-proclaimed progressive-big-think guy, is going to be a consultant for Wal-Mart. Will he be working with the planet's largest retailer to cut its carbon footprint by 50 percent, source its products locally from sustainable suppliers, or make fundamental changes to its labor practices? No. Werbach has been brought on to teach Wal-Mart's "associates" how to live a less consumptive existence in their everyday lives, how to eat healthy food and buy compact fluorescent light bulbs on their meager wages.

Wal-Mart's line is that this new "Environmental Health and Wellness Program" was created as a direct response to requests from its employees. Oddly they have not responded to employee requests for a living wage, affordable health care, or unscheduled bathroom breaks. The Wal-Mart Workers Association in Tampa, Fla., sent Werbach a letter respectfully asking him not to lend Wal-Mart his name or environmental credentials. They insightfully point out that greenwashing for Wal-Mart is woefully out of step with the views expressed in his 1997 book Act Now, Apologize Later, in which he compares the retail giant to a "virus, infecting and destroying American culture."

Let's be really blunt: there is no such thing as a green big box that is full of exploited workers selling you cheap disposable stuff made in sweatshops on the other side of the planet. Whenever environmentalists help Wal-Mart score easy "corporate responsibility" points in The New York Times, they set back the efforts of working people in their battle with Wal-Mart, and simply reinforce the flaws of the old environmentalism which Werbach and others declared dead over a year ago.

Shades of grey are the colors I see. I try not to shop at Wal-Mart because I don't like the way they treat their workers and their use of sweat-shop made products. But they are not evil. The world is not black and white. Even Wal-Mart has its good points. I hope they do go green; the planet and our children will benefit.