The big-box company’s new glossy environmental report can’t hide that its fundamental problem is its business model.

Wal-Mart’s New Greenwashing Report
By Sarah Anderson

Two years ago, Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott announced a bold initiative to turn the world’s largest corporation green. After numerous delays, the company has finally released its first progress report.

So how much greener are they? To find out, you first need to wade through 40 pages of data on other various and sundry issues. For example, the report boasts that company employees enrolled in a personal sustainability project lost a combined total of 184,315 pounds in 2006 (1.3 pounds per enrollee).

There’s also a glowing review of health benefits, even though less than half of employees buy into a company plan that many have criticized as unaffordable on a Wal-Mart paycheck. (The company pays full-time employees an average of $10.76 per hour and refuses to disclose part-time pay).

The company brags about its charitable giving, highlighting that it has handed out over half a million dollars in one Chicago neighborhood selected as its first Jobs and Opportunity Zone. (The report doesn’t mention that Chicago is a hotbed of opposition. Activists have blocked one Supercenter, and in 2006 the mayor had to use veto power to kill a measure that would’ve required all big-box retailers to pay decent wages and benefits.)

But what about the much-hyped environmental goals? For two years, CEO Scott has received laudatory press for his pledge that Wal-Mart will some day be supplied entirely by renewable energy, create zero waste, and sell sustainable products.

The centerpiece of Scott’s green initiative has been his promise to reduce global warming pollution from existing stores by 20 percent by the year 2012. A look at the results so far reveals why these indicators are buried in the back of the report. On page 47, we learn that the company’s carbon emissions actually increased by nine percent in 2006. On the goal of producing zero waste, the report merely states that a “measurement tool is in development.”

To his credit, Scott admits in the report that there is “work ahead of us.” However, what he is likely never to admit is that even if he achieved all of his stated goals, Wal-Mart’s business model is inherently unsustainable.

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