wal-mart

Forests need strong allies to win their survival battles. This week it seems they have a new powerful friend that might help. His name is Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart just announced that it's selected capitol buildings in 19 states and Puerto Rico to assist with cutting emissions and save on energy costs. The company will actually pay engineers to do the energy audits and for the capitols. Whoa.

An unlikely source of green information - Wal-Mart

In a landmark initiative with far-reaching potential, Wal-Mart Stores announced yesterday that it wants to improve the energy efficiency from the vast network of suppliers that fill the shelves of the world's largest retailer. As competitors have seen before, what Wal-Mart demands (typically, lower prices) Wal-Mart gets. So this move has the potential to reduce energy use around the world.

Ranjit Arab on corporate surveillance and the greening of Walmart.

Love them or hate them, Wal-Mart has been making news for a while now with their environmental efforts including asking vendors to reevaluate their packaging and trying to decrease energy usage in their stores.

Today I caught news of quite the story that will hopefully have a ripple effect on other companies throughout the industry. Giant food retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced that its store brand milk in the United States will now come exclusively from cows not treated with artificial growth hormones.

Wal-Mart has taken a bad rap the last several years for being environmentally and socially unconsious. It represents all that has gone wrong with commercialism, right? Maybe not. Wal-mart might actually be a leader for a people-centered form of environmentalism.

Ecolabels are everywhere from Wal- Mart ’s “seafood aisle” to my local grocery store. But, what do these labels really mean? Ecolabelling.org - your source on the background of over 285 ecolabels around the world - makes it easier to answer these questions and more by sharing a global database of who’s deciding what’s green.

**POP-UP WARNING**

Good story about a leading environmentalist coming to terms with working with WalMart in an effort to encourage its staff to live more sustainable lives.

Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott announced his company was introducing their own reusable shopping bag. The new Wal-Mart shopping bags are made from a fabric containing rPET. The bags are made from 85% recycled content and hold more than twice the amount of an average plastic bag. The bags will sell for $1 and be located near checkout aisles in Wal-Mart stores.

Wal-Mart, in a major announcement said by May 2008 it would only sell concentrated liquid laundry detergent in its US stores. The announcement from Lee Scott, president and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores will also cover Wal-Mart Canada.

Wal-Mart's current national advertising circular distributed in Sunday newspapers across the country this week features a 3/4 page focus on green products with a strong message on reducing packaging. The top of the page reads "Now you can save the planet while you save money." The new ad is a first for Wal-Mart and is very similar to an ad Target ran (sans the focus on packaging waste) in May in their national circular.