Wal-Mart’s Shade of Green

photo by Brave New Films

A few years ago when my wife was working with a New Urbanism project locally, we toured through a few big cities to gain some insight that we can’t glean here in tiny Buena Vista. I recall passing several strip malls, one anchored by a Wal-Mart. This one was different. Conspicuously absent was its blue signage. This was a green “Wal-Mart” on a stucco facade and below read, “Your Neighborhood Grocery Store.” I had to do a double take and briefly contemplated the irony of gathering observations for New Urbanism and coming across this neighborhood grocery store fit snuggly on a 10-acre parcel of land. The thought passed and I have not seen any other Superstore that advertises as such.

Now the Wall Street Journal prints an article about Wal-Mart’s new green ratings.

Wal-Mart is pulling together new rating system that seems to want to identify how environmentally friendly, or maybe sustainable, or just plain ‘green’, products are. Any shopper can turn the tag and see what the impacts of the product are. Fantastic, I say. And curious. Naysayers have already pointed out the potential new federal labeling standards which may be impetus behind Wal-Mart’s rating. Similar to new organic or other standards, if a corporation plays ball at the onset, then it may influence the final regulations, all in accord with their intentions. Maybe its alturism. Maybe its some combination.

Here are a couple of things that jump out.

1. Environmental Costs. The idea is to include true environmental costs on a label. So many gallons of water were used for this product. So much dye to color the t-shirt. So many pounds of fertilizer were applied to this cotton field on an acre basis, which is x number of grams of fertilizer per ounce of cotton, and x ounces of cotton went into the t-shirt, therefore…And a polyester blend has x ounces of petroleum…etc.  Yet, very few people can account for even this level of detail, and then do not necessarily include how much water and petroleum it took to mine the fertilizer, process it, bag it and ship it. For example.
2. Social Costs. Health and social costs are another curiosity. I think of the Sweet Honey and the Rock song, Are My Hands Clean? which traces an article of clothing around the world as it is fabricated. It’s sits in a package ready to be purchased with no recognition of the hands it has passed through, nor the conditions under which it was created at each stage.
3. Precision in Energy and Water Audits. A head of lettuce grown in Arizona may take as much as 52 gallons of water and 1/3 a gallon of gasoline to grow to the point of harvest. Then it must be washed and transported, packaged and regularly misted after that. This 52 gallon figure is very specific to this product, and the lettuce is not made up of many ingredients, only one: lettuce. It is rare to find a packaged food that has fewer than 5 ingredients. In the past, I have blogged about the potential carbon associated with a cup of coffee. Wal-Mart proposes to identify products that are carbon neutral. With a true energy and/or water audit, such a label can be accurate but requires a level of oversight and inspection that seems onerous.
4. The Unaware Consumer. As a consumer, I may read a label and see that a t-shirt is carbon neutral. Unfortunately, as I have seen with the Carbon Neutral designation in coffee roasting, I would only have to pay a few hundred dollars for someone to plant trees to offset the gas used in roasting and some transportation of our employees. The process of becoming carbon neutral begins once the green beans are in the facility and ends once they leave. An unaware consumer would potentially read a label that focuses on only a chunk of the process, and assume neutrailty included the process in its entirety.

True, I am skeptical of these new Green Ratings. And yes, I have only read one article with a few quotes taken out of context. It may be that Wal-Mart can create an innovative and groundbreaking approach that revolutionizes how we consume. If done correctly, Wal-Mart may have the resources, and certainly has the audience, to affect how products are purchased on a national scale.

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