GREEN or GREED? The ALL Clad Deluxe Slow cooker selling at $249 (referred to in this article)was made in China! How sustainable is that? All these great companies who go green, go to China .... Electrolux, All Clad ...etc. The problem is all the green washing going on. I am always checking the products in the stores, big or small and they all seem to be made in China! We need to get away from that as a nation. We should buy local and purchase products made locally (or products made in countries that need help. There are so many problems with buying Made in China products the list is too long to list. GREEN or GREED? ... the choice is ours to make on a daily basis.

Bottom line is that Walmart is part of the problem and will never be more than less of a problem. Why? Their very business model is unsustainable. Because Hunter Lovins or some other high profile experts are saying that their efforts are having an impact doesn't address this core issue. They're still bad, just not as bad as they otherwise would be. (On the other hand, if they hadn't gotten all this good green press over the last few years, maybe public opinion would have turned so negative, their impacts would have been reduced even more through a damaged brand image and loss of sales.) Also, the Sustainability Index is a joke - there are plenty or certifications and other criteria upon which to judge the sustainability of a product likely to fit a Walmart-type product mix.

The other aspect of this issue, and I give Mr. Gunther respect for acknowledging at least an aspect of it, is that Walmart and their sustainability efforts have spawned the "corporate sustainability consulting industry." There are vested interests in promoting their work and similar work going on at other bog box retailers and large corporate brands. Is their work reducing their impacts? Undoubtedly. Will it lead to a green and sustainable solution? Most probably not because the premises upon which their business model rests, and global corporate capitalism generally, is most of the problem.

Ms. Mitchell was right on in her series at Grist. Consultants who work with Walmart would do better to heed the criticism, be honest with themselves and the impact of their work, then actually try to better.

I think it was a very good article. I particularly liked the introduction about confirmation bias, which rings true. And the world IS complicated. I don't like Walmart much, and think it has helped to destroy small communities - but as the author suggests, those communities allowed big boxes like Walmart to build, then shopped there. So we can't simply blame Walmart for everything.

The article was missing something though. Let say we were giving out grades. Interface Carpet and its Mount Sustainability program would get an "A" or an "A+". Other companies would also get high grades. Walmart ... what would it's grade be? A "B" perhaps, if you agree with this article's author.

A "B" is not a bad grade, but it's a long way off from an A+.

For the little bits of good they're doing, WalMart still continues to sell cruel factory farmed foods such as eggs from hens crammed into tiny cages and pork from sows kept in small barren crates. This is not only unsustainable and inhumane, but extremely detrimental to the environment. It would be nice to see WalMart take a stance and sell only cage-free (or better) eggs and crate-free pork.

A small store selling to a dedicated few environmentally conscious people can do a nice business, and whether they are truly sustainable is still open to question. That small store model cannot be applied to a major retailer.

If we didn't have Walmart, we would have other big box stores. As a major world player in commerce and transportation, Walmart can and must plan for the long run. Just how good is good enough sustainability for Walmart? How about better that other large retailers? How about improving year over year?

Instead of just lambasting Walmart for not measuring up to unattainable ideals, how about recognizing and supporting the good things they do, while encouraging them to do better.

No large company will take on a loosing business strategy for the sake of the environment. It is up to the people who care about the environment to do what we can to make a sustainable business practices profitable.

Here are a number of things people can do:

- Support a carbon tax
- Support up front charging of energy use and disposal costs.
- Support energy standards on appliances.
- Support product testing and durability ratings for products
- Support life cycle cost labeling that takes into account
- - Retail cost
- - Embedded energy for manufacturing, transportation and sale
- - Expected product life span
- - Expected product Energy use
- - disposal costs
- Support education of children and adults in basic environment issues and life skills. Everyone should know how to read and understand unit costs for groceries, Energy use metrics on appliances etc.

the fact that you acknowledge confirmation bias doesn't change the fact that YOU'RE NOTHING MORE THAN A BOUGHT AND PAID FOR WALMART SHILL, marc. maybe your usual audience of ignoramuses buys it, but those of us who do our own homework don't. quit wasting our time, clown.

Last time I checked "sustainable" meant sustainable aka a process that can continue indefinitely without harm to people or the ecosphere. That means zero-waste, zero carbon footprint, zero emissions, zero non-renewable energy sources, zero labor violations. A business model that crushes every labor movement in the US, where everything is made in China, a country with a politically manipulated currency, where Wal-Mart is the largest contributor to the US / China trade deficit by shipping enormous quantities of finite raw materials and receiving back finished goods via slave labor that are not food, water or shelter that all end up in the landfill where the transport of everything involved above including more buildings than any other company the number cause of global warming, is fueled by oil a non renewable incredibly finite dirty pollutant that will hit peak oil any day now or 10 years from now max, makes everything about Wal-Mart unsustainable. A few token recycling programs is indeed greenwashing.

Not sustainable things about Wal-Mart:

petroleum
politically manipulated yuan
ever increasing trade deficit
slave labor
buildings burning electricity from coal burning power plants
pollution of every kind
landfill waste of every kind
plastics use of every kind
non essential consumer products
non local products

So how can anyone who is not an industry shill for Wal-Mart call them "sustainable"?

One tiny thing could happen on any of those dimensions and their business model becomes unsustainable in a heartbeat. The good news is peak oil is coming and Wal-Mart's days are numbered as a result, even if they could somehow manage all the other unsustainable variables. They cannot control how much oil the earth has left which is very little.

As a professional who has spent years attempting to help retailers become more sustainable, it's hard to support a good portion of your responses, Marc. Comments from Walmart like "we've got to plant this forest one tree at a time" are so typical of a company reacting too slowly to an issue that needs to be fastracked. I'm certain that if this forest was about saving Walmart money, they'd be planting trees by the hundreds or thousands. I do believe Walmart wants to do a great job in sustainability and do think they've taken some great steps. But they get too much credit for doing too little- in terms of social (a joke), energy (a work in progress at best), and the Index (wait, wait, wait. wait some more)...

The bigger issue is that they are attempting to do that in the context of remaining the low price (and often low value) leader. By doing so, they can't possibly lead, unless the sustainability goal aligns directly with the cost benefit goal. And we know that in this atmosphere, that's a rare double. So...Stacy, keep up the good work. Marc, thanks for creating a another forum for Stacy's work to be seen and try to keep the skepticism alive in your thoughts and articles.

If on the ground you want to see how companies like Walmart are becoming cruel to people on whose efforts they are surviving, just take personnel interviews of the associates working with them. Such a big company with internationally reputed name pays there associate the amount that makes them hard to even survive. The company that is cutting people everyday to make more profits and putting extra pressure on those few poor people who just work because they do not have other options available to them. When you talk about sustainability, it doesn't mean anything to such big giants. They can do a lot to bring a change and awareness. They haven't yet become a role model. Have you ever noticed how much good stuff that can make millions of people live a better life is thrown in garbage everyday and just imagine they say they cannot device a strategy to save this good stuff of being thrown in Garbage.

Why the government don't understand the simple thing that promoting these few big giants is like spoiling all the small business of thousands of people and making rich just few of them.

People should come forward to fight for equality and stop commercial racism.