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Business is business, they say, but I'm often reminded that business is personal, too.
Back in about 2005, Lee Scott, who was then CEO of Walmart, traveled with Fred Krupp, the president of the Environmental Defense Fund, to the top of Mount Washington, to visit a weather research station and meet with environmental scientists, including Steve Hamburg, who's now the chief scientist at EDF. On their way, Scott stopped to visit with a New Hampshire maple farmer who told him that warmer weather was threatening the maple syrup business his family had operated for four generations. By the end of the trip, Scott had seen the impacts of climate change for himself -- and seen how they could evolve into business issues for Walmart.
Mike Duke, Scott's successor as CEO, took a climate-change field trip of his own a few years later. He spent the night in an ice hotel on a glacier in Sweden, where he heard about the impact of climate change on the Arctic. A doubter before then, he was convinced. Meanwhile, another Walmart exec went to Turkey to meet with cotton farmers, visiting a conventional farm — where cotton plants are intensively treated with herbicides and pesticides — and an organic farm where workers and the land were treated better.
These trips were arranged by a former river rafting guide named Jib Ellison, whose consulting firm, BluSkye, has guided Walmart on its remarkable journey towards sustainability. A colorful character -- he once arranged rafting trips with Americans and Russians to help ease Cold War tensions -- Ellison is the hero of a lively new book, Force of Nature: The Unlikely Story of Wal-Mart's Green Revolution, by Edward Humes, an award-winning journalist. It's the first book about the greening of Walmart, and a valuable one, particularly for its insights into array of overlapping forces that drove the makeover of Walmart.
About those field trips, for example, Humes writes that the WMT execs
... returned home -- as Ellison had planned and hope -- moved by what (they) had seen, felt and heard. As never before, Wal-Mart's leaders had seen the face of climate change, pesticides and air pollution -- and it was the weathered face of a maple farmer, it was the vanishing snow lines of ancient glaciers, it was the clothing and skin of children dusky from pesticide residue. "You don't get that in a briefing paper," Ellison remarked to Scott. The CEO nodded.
Now, business isn't just personal, of course. Scott began exploring sustainability back in the mid-2000s because Walmart had s terrible reputation, particularly in places (like Chicago and LA) where it had no stores and wanted to open some. Once Ellison got in the door, thanks to his friendship with Peter Seligmann, the founder of Conservation International, who introduced him to Rob Walton, Walmart's chairman, he was able to show Scott that the company could save money by going green.
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/wal-mart-the-high-cost-of-low-price/
A great example of how
A great example of how effectively a company can brainwash people into thinking they're a responsible organisation. Look a little deeper and you'll see the destruction that Walmart reaps on its communities economies and small business owners, the hard ships that are forced on its employees and yes, the environmental impact.
Wake up!
Why is a 43% increase in
Why is a 43% increase in revenue the sign of a problem? We should celebrate the fact that companies taking such major steps for sustainability are the ones that are growing, and that sustainability and business growth are not mutually exclusive.
The idea is that it's hard to
The idea is that it's hard to a call a company sustainable who is selling more and more stuff, even if that stuff is in slightly smaller packages or uses slightly less energy to make. Basically, any of the "quick win" efficiency gains are swamped by the negative impacts of selling more stuff. Revenue growth would be great if it is linked to a lower overall absolute impact on the planet.