'Green' Wal-Mart: an Oxymoron?

[marmar]

from the Washington Post Writers Group, via ReclaimDemocracy.org:


'Green' Wal-Mart: an Oxymoron?


By Neal Peirce
Distributed by the Washington Post Writers Group, June 24, 2007


WalMart has been harvesting kudos for its dramatic “green” promises. Even Environmental Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council have gone on record praising the massive retailer's intentions to reduce electricity usage in its stores 20 percent by 2013 and to double the fuel economy of its trucks by 2015.

But author-activist Stacy Mitchell has tossed a firecracker into the WalMart-environmentalist lovefest. In a Grist magazine article and subsequent interview, she acknowledges that WalMart's commitments are no mere “greenwashing” -- that they will in fact save substantial electricity, oil and carbon impact.

But the green moves miss the mega-point, insists Mitchell, author of the recent book “Big-Box Swindle.” WalMart along with such chains as Target and Home Depot divert customers from close-in neighborhood or town shopping to the outer fringes of metro areas.
In fact the big retail boxes have displaced tens of thousands of neighborhood and downtown businesses and focused the necessities of life into huge stores that draw car-borne shoppers from large areas. Longer and longer drives are necessary to buy milk or bread, pick up a container of paint or a lawnmower part.

A principal result: shopping-related driving grew by a stunning 40 percent, three times as fast as driving for all purposes, from 1990 to 2001 (the last reported period). By 2001, Americans were logging over 330 billion miles going to and from the store. A conservative estimate puts the current figure at 365 billion miles, producing 154 million metric tons of CO2 annually. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://reclaimdemocracy.org/walmart/2007/green_oxymoron.php

[Bobbieo]

1. One Wal-Mart supercenter is just 8 tenths of a mile from my home

and is located in almost in the center of the community. Although, this may be the exception rather then the rule.

[kestrel91316]

2. At what gas price (per gallon) will these mega-stores simply fail?