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Wal-Mart Gives A Green Light to Earth Friendly Business Practices
By admin | July 13, 2007
Wal-Mart is trying hard to kick its reputation as America’s premier Evil Corporate Giant, and it is doing so by trying to become one of the leaders in the “green evolution.”
Wal-Mart, which over the past decade has been one of the most embattled corporations for a variety of reasons, has made giant strides over the past year or two to join big boys like Nike, Starbucks and McDonald’s as leaders in “green business.” Among its environment-friendly moves, Wal-Mart has reduced the toxic ingredients in its products, created a five-year plan to reduce packaging and begun a move to solar power in its stores.
Two laboratories are monitoring the energy-saving Aurora Project (so named because one of the experimental stores is in Aurora, Colo.), and the early returns (as of March 2007) indicated the stores using wind turbines to generate electricity are between 6 percent and 10 percent more efficient than the typical Wal-Mart store.
Wal-Mart also is planning to invest more than $500 million a year toward its “green business,” installing natural-light roofs and energy-saving ventilation systems, among other things.
Wal-Mart’s experiment follows similar solar systems already in use by Walgreens, Whole Foods and Kinko’s, among others. The renewable energy used by all of these companies not only is more efficient, thus saving the companies money, but it is less polluting.
As Michael Besancon, Whole Foods’ Green Mission task force leader, told GreenBiz.com in January 2006: “Offsetting 100 percent of our electricity use with renewable, clean energy strengthens our commitment to be a leader in environmental stewardship by helping to clean the air and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.”
The big boys are doing it in other ways as well. This month, McDonald’s enlisted Echelon Corporation to network the restaurant’s kitchen equipment to create the “kitchen of the future,” with the goal of lowering energy use and improving efficiency.
“We are committed to being a market leader in environmental responsibility and energy management, so it’s great to have a proven platform that we can use to address such an important issue,” said Bob Langert, McDonald’s vice president of Corporate Social Responsibility. “Echelon’s technology will also enable our franchisees to create restaurants that are easier to operate, facilitate preventive maintenance and provide new services while saving energy.”
While more and more major companies are turning into green businesses, observers note that they are just scratching the surface of energy-saving possibilities.
In summarizing the “green” developments of 2006, Joel Makower of GreenBiz.com said, “While a couple of new issues or companies gained traction last year, 2006 did not offer any sea change in how companies are addressing environmental challenges. Rather, the year saw a continuation of existing trends: big companies moving in the right direction, but most having a long, long way to go.”
But if status-quo king Wal-Mart has finally been spurred to move in the right direction, there is certainly hope that the big companies will get there.
As Makower said, “If Wal-Mart can embrace green, it feels like anything is possible.”
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February 11th, 2008 at 2:48 am
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February 21st, 2008 at 11:43 am
[…] the dynamics of this movement as well as provide resources on Green Business Initiatives, such as Armand Rousso’s take on Wal Mart’s Green Initiatives as well as his post “Green Business is Good […]