Walmart CEO: "We are not green"

[One Sweet World]

I do some work with Wake Up Walmart and blog about their greening initiative because, honestly, I think it's a good idea but is being enacting half-heartedly.

Well, the fine folks at Treehugger agree with me and have a great post up detailing how their environmental campaign is actually a big oxymoron. You see, the gist of the campaign is that products should last longer.

Alex Pasternack at Treehugger quotes Walmart CEO Lee Scott saying:

"By making better products, people will be able to pay a fair value for 10, 15 years. People who buy a better TV will live better because less money going out of their pockets."

True enough, but Scott went on to say that by producing better products it'll attract more customers and the Bentonville behemoth can expand. This doesn't make sense to me on a couple of levels.

1. Their products are horrible quality.

2. If they want to have better quality products, why do get 70% of their goods from communist China?

3. Lee is suggesting that the end goal is to expand business. This is a chain that already takes up more square acreage than the island of Manhattan.

Walmart may become incrementally greener by selling more sustainable products. But if they are certainly going to become LESS green the more SuperCenters they place on farms and wetlands.

The solution: Buy local; boycott Walmart!

[Why Syzygy]

1. The last thing I got at Wal Mart ..

about two years ago, was a CD player which lasted four months! They wouldn't even exchange it because it had been more than 90 days. Barely.

Wal Mart sucks.

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

2. Point well made.

I have a question that's somewhat off-topic that's been bothering me for a while.

A boycott would hurt Walmart as a whole, but odds are the working class would feel the hit first, since it's unlikely the executive board would respond to a profit loss by cutting their own pay. Either they will raise prices, hurting their working-class consumers or they will lay off workers (which history has shown they care little about).

Do you think there's a way to have a "best of both worlds" situation where Walmart can be compelled to comply with more eco-friendly, worker-friendly, community-friendly policies while protecting the working class at the same time?

[tkayj]

4. Have you not seen the documentary?

"Walmart: The High Price of Low Cost"

Walmart's business practices are such that it's employees are literally trapped into a near poverty status. The workers are not allowed to work overtime, and Walmart's definition of full-time is less than a 40 hr week. It's health care plan is so poor that it renders it necessary for most of it's employees to take out additional government-aid policies. Walmart actually has literature available that points it's employees toward these government programs. When a Walmart moves into a city/town, all the Mom and Pop specialty stores go out of business. These are businesses which pay a good wage and provide a good health care plan. Although Walmart prices are nice and low, it's because they use near-slave-labor in China factories. We don't need any more Walmarts!

Understandably, in our current economic crunch, any job is better than no job at all, and we don't want any more layoffs if we can prevent them. However, when we get back on our feet, Walmart has to DIE. It must be amputated like a gangrenous limb. For now it must be viewed as a necessary evil.

(Caveat: I don't know if any of Walmart's practices have improved since the documentary that exposed the practices at that time.)

Go online and buy the video documentary, you'll never shop at Walmart again --despite their prices.

:puke:

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

5. Thanks for the recommendation. I'll check it out

[NNadir]

3. Somebody call Amory Lovins and tell the stupid fuck that his owners have exposed

his stupid fat consumerist fat anti-environmental ass for what it is.