Walmart's Sins Against Mother Nature

happy about Wal-Mart’s sins against Mother Nature. In the article “The Greening of Wal-Mart”, Wal-Mart’s business sustainability strategy was stated. In October 2005 the corporation released this strategy, which includes being “supplied 100% by renewable energy; to create zero waste; and to sell products that sustain our resources and the environment” (Denend & Plambeck 2). This seems like a rather drastic strategy for a company of Wal-Mart’s size to obtain. In Danielle Kurtzleben’s article “Wal-Mart Struggles to Overcome Environmental Criticism”, she ponders the question of whether a corporation of Wal-Mart’s magnitude can ever truly be “green”. According to the EPA, Wal-Mart is the 3rd largest US corporate consumer of green power, renewable

Wal-Mart admits that its greenhouse gas footprint has grown by 13.8 percent since 2005, although this seems like a lot, the gas emission has grown because the company has grown (Kurtzleben 2). A statistic that environmentalist find horrific is that “…one Wal-Mart Supercenter uses the same amount of energy as 1,095 US homes do in one day” (Kurtzleben 2). The problem goes even farther than that though, in Cathedral City, California there were instances documented on a PBS program where the company built stores to take advantage of tax breaks and then abandoned them when the incentives expired. This not only left the local community with a huge empty structure, which caused harm to the environment but also huge shortfalls in public revenues (Garten 1). Wal-Mart with regards to the environment is a huge negative. The company may claim to be “green” but many believe it’s just a ploy (aka green washing), which cultivates an image of environmental responsibility to win the consumers favor (Kurtzleben