Stacy Mitchell makes the argument in this column for The Grist that it’s impossible for Wal-Mart to be eco-friendly, despite its recent “green” initiatives. Big-box stores are killing small, neighborhood businesses. People have to drive farther to go shopping, creating more CO2 emissions–pollution that Wal-Mart hasn’t taken into account and exceeds by far its own combined greenhouse gas emissions.
Yet, such well-known environmental groups as the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense are applauding Wal-Mart’s efforts. After all, the company has promised to make its stores 20 percent more energy efficient by 2013 and double the fuel economy of its trucks by 2015, among other things. But, if Mitchell is correct, Wal-Mart’s initiatives can’t offset the pollution created by its own shoppers.
Mitchell writes: “This cannot be dismissed as greenwashing. It’s actually far more dangerous than that. Wal-Mart’s initiatives have just enough meat to have distracted much of the environmental movement, along with most journalists and many ordinary people, from the fundamental fact that, as a system of distributing goods to people, big-box retailing is as intrinsically unsustainable as clear-cut logging is as a method of harvesting trees.”
"Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything."
~ Blaise Pascal
About Me
Debbi Mack practiced law for nine years before changing careers and following her lifetime dream of becoming a writer. She is a mystery author, as well as a freelance writer and researcher. You can learn more about Debbi at her Web site, http://www.debbimack.com .
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