Wal-Mart to Go Green?
AURORA, COLO. — Wind turbines, rows of tall windows, a 200-foot-long dimpled-metal wall and shiny rooftop solar panels are just hints of what’s to come. Here, next to a busy freeway in suburban Denver, is tomorrow’s Wal-Mart today. And it’s getting a lot of attention.
For the last year, this experimental Wal-Mart Supercenter has been testing ways to be more environmentally sensitive in everything it does. The world’s largest retailer wants ideas it can use in all of its more than 6,600 stores around the globe.
“The goal has never been to build demonstration stores,” said Andy Ruben, who heads the company’s environmental efforts. “The experimental stores are successful when the learnings get applied to all stores.”
And the changes are likely to spread beyond Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. “It’s transformational,” said Charles Lockwood, an environmental real estate consultant in Los Angeles, whose article “Building the Green Way” appeared in June’s Harvard Business Review. “By their size, they’re forcing manufacturers to come up with more earth-friendly, energy-efficient products, which then become the industry norm.”
As the company’s environmentally conscious changes roll out to its other stores, Wal-Mart figures it has 130 million opportunities every week — each time a shopper walks through its doors — to encourage people to make money-saving, earth-friendly choices in their own homes and lives.
Wal-Mart’s sustainability efforts, unlike some of its other initiatives, also have won the company something more elusive: approval from critics and others not predisposed to Wal-Mart fandom.
A recent New York gala dinner hosted by movie producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein honored Wal-Mart Chief Executive H. Lee Scott Jr. for “his commitment to environmental sustainability.” Co-hosts included talk-show star Charlie Rose, NBC Universal CEO Bob Wright, MTV creator Robert Pittman and investment banker Steven Rattner.
The company’s folksy image has taken a beating over the last 18 months, with critics lambasting Wal-Mart for its wage and benefit policies.
By turning to conservationism, which many urban and wealthier shoppers find attractive, Wal-Mart may have found a way to kill several birds with one environmentally friendly stone. But Wal-Mart says that’s not why it’s going green. Above all, the retailer says, its earth-friendly initiatives will save the company and its customers money, which goes to the heart of the Wal-Mart business model.
Just inside the Aurora store’s entryways, giant walls herald “The Aurora Experiment.” Pamphlets offer maps and descriptions of the projects and lists of the renewable materials used to make flooring, fixtures, counters and benches. A TV monitor offers real-time displays of energy used and saved in different tests throughout the store. On a cloudy Thursday morning last week, on the store’s first anniversary, solar panels were generating 16.7 kilowatts of power in the middle of the day. That’s roughly 10% of their capacity and enough to power four or five houses.
[Read the full article on the Los Angeles Times website.]
