When WalMart finally unveiled their new Sustainability Index, I found the 15 questions a bit underwhelming. Especially, after all the press and fuss (you can download the questions from the WalMart web site).

For example, the first question, “Have you measured your corporate greenhouse gas emissions?” is so simplistic, that a yes answer could mean many things. Scope 1? Scope 2? Have they taken on the challenge of addressing the full supply chain?

GreenBiz.com offers some advice for getting the most out of the questions, if you are a Walmart supplier that is just beginning to think about environmental issues.

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International companies such as McDonald’s are happy, and companies like Nike, Wal-Mart and Carrefour are asking for more.

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This column highlights the top economic stories of the week.

Many Japanese, want what amounts to a revolution in a politically risk-averse nation: the ousting of the Liberal Democratic Party, which has governed Japan for more than a half-century. More on this story here.

The world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores is on a mission to determine the social and environmental impact of every item it puts on its shelves. And it has recruited scholars, suppliers, and environmental groups to help it create an electronic indexing system to do that. More on this story here.

Europe is gearing up for a major swine flu outbreak in the Fall. New calculations from the U.K.’s Department of Health suggest that, in the worst-case scenario, 63,000 people in the country could die after contracting the H1N1 flu virus in the first wave of the pandemic. More on this story here.

Economic downturns have historically been times in which there are more startup businesses than usual.  This particular recession is a great time to start a green business.  One easy place to start, for someone without a great deal of startup capital or knowledge base, would be to start a mobile food vendor business.  More on this story here.

Nabucco and other new gas pipelines may make Europe’s energy more secure, but market liberalisation matters too. More on this story here.

The opening session of Intersolar North America was packed and full of energy. The solar trade show almost tripled its exhibition space and more than doubled the number of exhibitors from last year, when the first North America Intersolar show was also hosted in San Francisco. More on this story here.

As the Economist wages the largest debate about bio-fuels in memory, another market opportunity appears to be showing itself in the bio production space as well. Bio plastics have been sprouting up in various applications, but a recent study puts the total market of green packaging at $43.9Billion by 2013. The highest growth gains in this market will be in bio plastics for reasons of price stability and increased capacity the report said. Bio plastics will, it is reported, preform at an annual growth rate of thirteen percent. This spells big news for an industry which currently holds only about .1% percent market share.

Part of the reason for this growth will be due to policy changes which restrict the use of some of the most environmentally damaging materials, but the largest effect seems to be coming from packaging producers themselves. Corporate social responsibility leader Coca Cola has developed a new bottle which is composed of around thirty percent bio plastics with the intended goal of developing a one hundred percent renewable option in the future. Likewise, Wal-Mart has begun sourcing toys and children’s goods made from bio plastics.

The draw is that decomposition coupled with less petroleum based material seems to be better environmentally, but some counter this analysis. According to the Guardian Newspaper, foods producers in the UK such as Innocent Drinks have chosen to stop using bio plastics due to lack of recycling options for the products at present. Likewise there have been claims that bio plastics can be environmentally damaging on par with their petroleum based counterparts. Recent innovations have made it so less energy is needed to create bio plastics and thus it seems the growth of the sector makes environmental sense. Followers of Bill McDonough’s cradle to cradle concept often tout the re-usability and closed-loop life cycle of these products, while others derided their historically slow decomposition rates.  Some applications in the burgeoning bio plastics space are:

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Earth Day takes place this April 22nd.

As a green leader or entrepreneur, the day begs the question, what will you be doing?

In a mad public relations world that anchors on events as a tangible “touch point” in lieu of diving into the messier (and harder to track or control) world of ‘awareness’, Earth Day is one of many symbols (i.e. polar bears) we use when speaking to some of the starker and concrete practices of the planet’s ecological anxieties.

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Wal-Mart Stores, Inc announced plans to test two different hybrid Class-8 trucks and three different types of alternative fuels in an effort to double their fleet’s fuel-efficiency.

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After years of protests and obstacles, Wal-Mart has given up on plans to build a giant SuperCenter store on the environmentally-sensitive White Slough in Vallejo, CA.

Environmental activists were joined by Vallejoans for Responsible Growth and California Healthy Communities Network in their opposition to the plans from the start. Due to their vocal opposition, Vellejo’s city council forced a $700,000 independent environmental investigation into the plans in 2007.

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So, when I pulled up the recorded webcast of Monday’s Sustainability Milestone Meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas, I was very interested to see what Mike Duke, who will take over the reigns of the company on February 2nd, had to say about the topic in relationship to the current economic climate.

Of course, this meeting was “star-studded” in a fashion: no Queen Latifah or American Idol winners, but famed architect and cradle-to-cradle proponent William McDonough was the keynote speaker for the event. While I’m always interested to hear what McDonough had to say, Duke was the one to watch at this meeting. The move towards sustainability has been a keystone of the second half of outgoing CEO Lee Scott’s tenure at the helm; would Duke give any indication that he didn’t share his predecessor’s passion for greening the company?

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Summer was here, and the living was sustainable… and here are some of our best efforts.

June 2008

• Caroline Savery declared that one of the top rules of living sustainbly is “Have fun!”
• Zachary Shahan offered a new twist on “think global, act local”: sustainability starts at the inidividual level.
• Mark Winstein answered the question “What is an investment product?”
• Low Impact Living listed 10 Ways to Cut Home Energy Consumption.

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]]> http://sustainablog.org/2008/12/26/the-twelve-days-of-sustainablog-poop-green-teeth-and-pimpin-your-ride/feed/ http://inspiredeconomist.com/2008/12/23/2008cause-for-inspiration-the-economic-year-in-review/ http://inspiredeconomist.com/2008/12/23/2008cause-for-inspiration-the-economic-year-in-review/#comments Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:28:25 +0000 Reenita Malhotra http://inspiredeconomist.com/2008/12/23/2008cause-for-inspiration-the-economic-year-in-review/

Hope-Despair, a painting by Feroza Unvala

2008 - what a year! As we get ready to draw the curtains on one of the most unsettling economic years in history, we the writers of the Inspired Economist are still wondering… was this year one that has left our battered economy begging for inspiration? Or have the sustainable events of 2008 spearheaded the initiation of what we believe is truly an Inspired Economy?

2008 was about the $700 billion bailout. Foreclosures. The plummeting stock market. As the year came to a close, the nation’s economic turmoil battled with the presidential election. But it was also a time when new businesses were born into what appears to be an unprecedented sustainability boom. When energy, economy and environment have taken on a new and inter-dependent definition.

As we position our economy to take off on this inspiring eve of the Obama generation, let’s reflect on the change that has come into play this year……

The First Quarter

The first quarter of the year saw the idea of social entrepreneuring take flight beyond the borders of America.



Cover of Jeffery Sach’s book Common Wealth

It was also the time when the Center for Resource Solutions launched the Environmental Tracking Network of North America – North America’s first network organization for renewable energy and greenhouse gas emissions tracking systems and registries.

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]]> http://inspiredeconomist.com/2008/12/23/2008cause-for-inspiration-the-economic-year-in-review/feed/ http://ecopreneurist.com/2008/12/03/thank-you-and-farewell-mr-lee-scott/ http://ecopreneurist.com/2008/12/03/thank-you-and-farewell-mr-lee-scott/#comments Thu, 04 Dec 2008 05:59:55 +0000 Dave Sattler http://ecopreneurist.com/2008/12/03/thank-you-and-farewell-mr-lee-scott/ Just days before the Thanksgiving holiday, Lee Scott, announced that as of February 1, 2009 he will step down as the CEO of WalMart. The CEO position will then be filled by Mike Duke, head of international operations.

Now, WalMart is by no means a saint, and makes for an easy target as the world’s largest retailer but it is hard to identify another company that has made such a dramatic transformation and taken such a leadership role in advancing green operations and standards in their industry than WalMart.

During his nine-year tenure as CEO, WalMart experienced severe public criticism, plummeting stock prices, and the retailer fell off the radar for the large majority of consumers lured by Target or Costco.

Much of the eco-friendly innovations in the retail industry today were initiated by Walmart, under the leadership of Lee Scott. Just last month, at the company’s sustainability summit in China last month, Lee Scott laid out even stricter environmental standards, saying;

“Our goal is for the supplier factories to meet or exceed all social and environmental laws and regulations” Wal-Mart President and CEO Scott told the gathering on Wednesday. “I want to be direct: My intention here is to send a strong message about how serious we are. Meeting social and environmental standards is not optional.”

Followed by this stern statement; “If they still do not improve, they will be banned from making products for Wal-Mart,” Scott said.

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]]> http://ecopreneurist.com/2008/12/03/thank-you-and-farewell-mr-lee-scott/feed/ http://ecochildsplay.com/2008/11/28/avoiding-consumerism-in-a-world-that-wants-you-to-buy-buy-buy/ http://ecochildsplay.com/2008/11/28/avoiding-consumerism-in-a-world-that-wants-you-to-buy-buy-buy/#comments Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:16:37 +0000 Jamie Ervin http://ecochildsplay.com/2008/11/28/avoiding-consumerism-in-a-world-that-wants-you-to-buy-buy-buy/ The last couple of weeks a realization has hit me… when I don’t go into stores, I want for little (this goes for wanting to buy things for my children). Our lives are full, we all have what we need and more. As Christmas approaches I have ventured out into the stores on a few occasions and BAM! “Oh, the kids would like this and that… isn’t that pretty… this would look great on the table…”

Commercials seem to have this effect on my kids, when they get to watch television they suddenly want EVERYTHING. There is nothing I see advertised that I then think, “oh, I want that”. For me, its a touch and feel kind of thing, which is why I also don’t do much online shopping.

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]]> http://ecochildsplay.com/2008/11/28/avoiding-consumerism-in-a-world-that-wants-you-to-buy-buy-buy/feed/ http://ecochildsplay.com/2008/11/28/worker-dies-mother-miscarries-in-black-friday-rush-buy-nothing-day/ http://ecochildsplay.com/2008/11/28/worker-dies-mother-miscarries-in-black-friday-rush-buy-nothing-day/#comments Fri, 28 Nov 2008 16:14:08 +0000 Jennifer Lance http://ecochildsplay.com/2008/11/28/worker-dies-mother-miscarries-in-black-friday-rush-buy-nothing-day/ Update:  The pregnant woman was injured; she did not miscarry as stated in early reports of the incident.

I’ve never understood what would move someone to get up early and be at a store at 5:00 am on the day after Thanksgiving.  The crowds, the hassle, and the grotesqueness of over-consuming is enough to make me stay away from any store on Black Friday.  Apparently, I am not alone, as today is also Buy Nothing Day.

Today is Buy Nothing Day:

Suddenly, we ran out of money and, to avoid collapse, we quickly pumped liquidity back into the system. But behind our financial crisis a much more ominous crisis looms: we are running out of nature… fish, forests, fresh water, minerals, soil. What are we going to do when supplies of these vital resources run low?

There’s only one way to avoid the collapse of this human experiment of ours on Planet Earth: we have to consume less.

It will take a massive mindshift. You can start the ball rolling by buying nothing on November 28th. Then celebrate Christmas differently this year, and make a New Year’s resolution to change your lifestyle in 2009.

It’s now or never!

Tragically, two souls have been lost already on this Black Friday. When the doors opened at a Long Island Wal-Mart at 5:00 am, a worker was trampled to death and a woman miscarried. The worker was an overnight stock clerk who was trying to hold back the unruly crowd of shoppers. Even as the man was trampled and gasping for air, shoppers continued to rush over and around him.  A pregnant woman was also knocked down. When the paramedics arrived, they told her there was nothing they could do for the baby that was already gone.  Sadly, shoppers just kept entering the store without paying attention to the dead man on the ground and the pregnant woman who lost her baby.

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]]> http://ecochildsplay.com/2008/11/28/worker-dies-mother-miscarries-in-black-friday-rush-buy-nothing-day/feed/ http://inspiredeconomist.com/2008/11/12/wal-mart-canada-launches-styrofoam-recycling-initiative/ http://inspiredeconomist.com/2008/11/12/wal-mart-canada-launches-styrofoam-recycling-initiative/#comments Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:46:30 +0000 Jeff McIntire-Strasburg http://inspiredeconomist.com/2008/11/12/wal-mart-canada-launches-styrofoam-recycling-initiative/ Styrofoam (or polystyrene) is nasty stuff: it lasts forever, can leach chemicals (especially when heated), and is really, really difficult to recycle. Wal-Mart Canada is launching an effort to address that last issue by partnering with Grace Canada (a division of W.R. Grace & Co.) to reuse styrofoam waste from packaging in the production of commercial insulation.

Wal-Mart and W.R. Grace? Some will certainly raise hackles in disgust…

Regardless of past issues, this looks like a very promising project. Wal-Mart has already shown real innovation with not only recycling packaging waste, but even turning it into a revenue stream.  According to the Environmental Leader article (linked above), “Grace Canada and its parent company W. R. Grace & Co. have recycled over 77 million pounds of foam polystyrene.” And styrofoam does have one thing going for it: it has great insulating properties.

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]]> http://inspiredeconomist.com/2008/11/12/wal-mart-canada-launches-styrofoam-recycling-initiative/feed/ http://inspiredeconomist.com/2008/11/03/wal-mart-and-china-will-sustainability-commitments-produce-results/ http://inspiredeconomist.com/2008/11/03/wal-mart-and-china-will-sustainability-commitments-produce-results/#comments Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:45:19 +0000 Jeff McIntire-Strasburg http://inspiredeconomist.com/2008/11/03/wal-mart-and-china-will-sustainability-commitments-produce-results/ If Wal-Mart is ever going to achieve the status of a company truly committed to sustainable business practices, there’s one 800-pound gorilla that it must address: China. The company’s sustainability summit on October 21 and 22 in Beijing was an attempt to do that, both from a PR perspective, but also in terms of “laying down the law” with its suppliers in China.

Green to Gold author Andrew Winston attended the summit, and listed the following commitments and statements that came out of it in a blog post at Harvard Business’ “Leading Green” blog:

• Supplier commitments: All suppliers will sign new agreements indicating compliance with environmental laws, starting with Chinese suppliers to the U.S., UK, and Canada in just 3 months. Over the next 3 years, all suppliers globally will sign.
• Audits: Wal-Mart will “strengthen” its surprise and third-party audit program
• Supplier goals: The top 200 suppliers will achieve 20% energy efficiency improvement, and most importantly, “By 2012, all suppliers that we buy from directly should source 95% of product from companies that have the highest ratings in audits.”
• Product goals and quality: Zero defective merchandise returns by 2012. Lee Scott connected quality to sustainability in very funny, specific terms: “Customers want a sock that will not fall down even if washed.”
• Transparency: Suppliers must reveal the name and location of every factory they use to make a product, as early as November for apparel, then home goods, toys, and others by the end of 2009. As [Wal-Mart's Vice Chairman Mike] Duke said, “If you sell us tennis shoes, we expect you to know and tell us where it was made and which sub-contractors were involved…If you don’t pose these questions, our customers will…in this age of YouTube there is no trust without transparency.” (Wal-Mart will have more insight into what’s going on at factories than ever before thanks to the work of Ma Jun who runs an NGO that has compiled compliance data on every factory. See his group’s stunning water pollution map here.)
• Dropping suppliers: Wal-Mart will work with suppliers that fail to comply, but “if after a period of time, the supplier does not improve, we will move our business.”

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]]> http://inspiredeconomist.com/2008/11/03/wal-mart-and-china-will-sustainability-commitments-produce-results/feed/ http://ecopreneurist.com/2008/10/29/three-fresh-ways-to-green-your-supply-chain-better-and-faster/ http://ecopreneurist.com/2008/10/29/three-fresh-ways-to-green-your-supply-chain-better-and-faster/#comments Wed, 29 Oct 2008 21:54:03 +0000 Olga Orda http://ecopreneurist.com/2008/10/29/three-fresh-ways-to-green-your-supply-chain-better-and-faster/ We saw Wal-Mart, a company with worldwide-wide revenues only second to Exxon-Mobile, signal last week in Beijing that it is moving away from “intermittent transactions with many suppliers toward longer-term arrangements with a smaller group of manufacturers“. Then, this week in the news, IBM starts on a roll to eliminate the ‘burden’ of paper — including paper costs, compliance risks and environmental challenges — from their customers’ supply chains with a handful of recently launched software and services.

What is going on here? Both companies are adopting tactics used by sustainability minded entrepreneurs as part of the time tested sustainability supply chain model: measure, purchase local where possible, maintain long-term relationships and integrate accountability at all ‘nodes’ of the chain.

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]]> http://ecopreneurist.com/2008/10/29/three-fresh-ways-to-green-your-supply-chain-better-and-faster/feed/ http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/10/23/wal-mart-holds-chinese-summit-for-ecological-sustainability/ http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/10/23/wal-mart-holds-chinese-summit-for-ecological-sustainability/#comments Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:59:13 +0000 Meg Hamill http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/10/23/wal-mart-holds-chinese-summit-for-ecological-sustainability/ In what is being called the “the most ambitious private sector drive yet” to go green, Wal-Mart told hundreds of the chain’s top Chinese suppliers this week that the store intends to raise standards and “green” its supply chain.



You read correctly.  At this week’s “sustainability summit,” in Beijing,  Lee Scott, Wal-Mart’s CEO,  told top Chinese suppliers that the chain “intends to use its market power to get more than just low prices.” At the gathering: Procter & Gamble, FedEx, Kimberly-Clark, Coca-Cola and Rubbermaid.

The Financial Times called the summit “the most ambitious private sector drive yet to reduce waste and pollution in China’s export-focused manufacturing industries.”

“Our environmental footprint is primarily through our supply chain as a company,” says Matt Kistler, head of Wal-Mart’s global sustainability efforts. “So we have the ability to really build a world-class, better quality, better value supply chain.”

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]]> http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/10/23/wal-mart-holds-chinese-summit-for-ecological-sustainability/feed/ http://ecochildsplay.com/2008/10/16/toxic-chemicals-in-wal-marts-bottled-water/ http://ecochildsplay.com/2008/10/16/toxic-chemicals-in-wal-marts-bottled-water/#comments Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:21:14 +0000 Derek Markham http://ecochildsplay.com/2008/10/16/toxic-chemicals-in-wal-marts-bottled-water/ Myth: Drinking bottled water is safer than drinking tap water.

Truth: You are being ripped off, and then poisoned, by drinking bottled water from unknown sources.

Recently found in bottled drinking water: Trihalomethanes, Haloacetic acids, Nitrates, Ammonia, Acetaldehyde, Hexane, Toluene, bacterial contamination, Arsenic, radioactivity contamination (and more…)

Not the sort of chemical cocktail you had in mind when you bought bottled water at the grocery store, now is it?

The results of a two year study by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) were recently released, detailing the lab tests of 10 brands of bottled drinking water from 8 different states in the US.

The report is shocking.

38 different chemical pollutants were detected, with an average of 8 contaminants per brand. One-third of the chemicals they found are not even regulated in drinking water. Some brands, like Sam’s Choice (Wal Mart) and Acadia (Giant) contained cancer-causing chemicals at levels exceeding the standards for safety set by the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986.

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]]> http://ecochildsplay.com/2008/10/16/toxic-chemicals-in-wal-marts-bottled-water/feed/ http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/10/15/toxic-bottled-water-at-wal-mart/ http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/10/15/toxic-bottled-water-at-wal-mart/#comments Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:52:58 +0000 Meg Hamill http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/10/15/toxic-bottled-water-at-wal-mart/ The Environmental Working Group (EWG) tested ten brands of bottled water and found that Wal-Mart’s “Sam’s Choice” contained chemical levels higher than is legal in California, and exceeding voluntary limits set by the industry.



The study found that 10 popular brands of bottled water, purchased from grocery stores and other retailers in 9 states and the District of Columbia, contained 38 chemical pollutants altogether, with an average of 8 contaminants in each brand.  The group is not disclosing most of the brand names at this point, but did single out Wal Mart’s “Sam’s Choice,” as a brand to be wary of.

The Environmental Working Group found that some of the Sam’s Choice bottled water bought from stores in Mountain View and Oakland, California, came from the Las Vegas Valley Water District’s public water supply, which is sometimes chlorinated.  Scott Huntley, a spokesman for the Las Vegas Valley Water District, said he had no knowledge that Wal-Mart was using Las Vegas’s water supply for bottling.

On Tuesday, the Environmental Working Group filed a notice to sue Wal-Mart, stating that the chain did not effectively warn the public about the health risks of their bottled water.

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