Yes, “The Case Against Corporate Social Responsibility,” as it appeared in yesterday’s WSJ doesn’t mention Walmart by name. Indeed, it doesn’t mention any company by name, but with all the hub hub about Walmart’s public image makeover, you can’t help but assume the author has Walmart in mind when he writes stuff like this: Large […]

I first learned of Seventh Generation in the early ’90s when I was executive editor of GIE Publishing’s Recycling Media Group and we covered the company’s green products. Jeffrey Hollender’s company is no stranger to us at The Writing On The Wal either. I have argued that the Soviet Union fell not because of nuclear […]

Citing low demand, Walmart is pulling seafood from a number of its superstores in Florida. Given Walmart’s track record with meat, perhaps customers are taking charge by avoiding what they percieve to be a less than trustworthy source. It has nothing to do with British Petroleum’s massive dump in the Gulf. No. Nothing at all. […]

[Update @ 1534 — I forwarded this story to a friend who is very involved in the chemical end of environmental concern and she just emailed me back to say that: I called Whole Foods HQ in Austin. Most of their stores are bpa-free (re: the receipts) and the rest will be converted within the […]

Of course Walmart objects to any environmental or green technology that actually raises its costs. Just as it kicked its Buy American campaign to the curb when it need to save money, so too will Walmart reject any environmental effort that doesn’t save it money. From The Boston Globe: The high cost of power from […]

While goofing around looking for something else I ran into the British retailer Tesco’s statement on its carbon footprint – it’s entire carbon footprint. Here’s the takeaway: The direct carbon footprint for the Tesco Group during the financial year to February 2007 was 4.13m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e)*. Our UK business emitted 2.25m […]

I realize that the economic allusion is wrong, but reading Andrew Winston’s piece about how fecking big Walmart is made me think about all our discussions since 2008 about businesses too big to fail? What could make Walmart collapse? From Huffington Post: The 2010 Fortune 500 list just came out and I’m completely blown away […]

I went to Colorado Springs last night to see “Fresh” (the movie). It has some similarities and interview subjects in common with the previously mentioned “Food, Inc.,” but unlike that otherwise excellent movie this one doesn’t suck up to Walmart. “Fresh” is an unrelenting attack on industrialized agriculture. It doesn’t matter if you put signs […]

As I grow older, I am continually amazed at how often Walmart gets mentioned in history books as a seminal institution during my lifetime. This quote is from a developer is from 2000 [Ten years ago!] and is on page 179 of Delores Hayden’s Building Suburbia: “Shopping centers built only in the 1960s are already […]

If Robert were around, he’d definitely link to this. Nevertheless, I’m still worried about fluoride, and I’m not insane.

From The Story of Stuff, by Annie Leonard (p. 124, footnotes omitted): “[I]t’s hard to take Wal-Mart seriously when it broadcasts its commitment to sustainability. Yes, Wal-Mart has made some real environmental improvements in its operations. Sources that are closer to the company than I swear there’s a sincere environmental awareness growing among many within […]

Stacy Mitchell at the Huffington Post: What journalists and even environmentalists so often fail to do in reporting on Wal-Mart’s sustainability announcements is to provide some context. Context is everything. Consider Wal-Mart’s latest announcement: It will push some of the factories that supply its stores to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. That’s a good thing […]

There is no suggestion that Walmart has done anything illegal in taking Oregonians to the carbon-footprint cleaners, but by paying $22.6 million to get $33.6 million Walmart schooled the state on how business is really done. From The Oregonian: When Oregon started handing out jumbo tax subsidies for renewable energy projects two years ago, one […]

Normally I would simply abstract this email I received from Derek Johnstone concerning Walmart’s Green Business Summit and the Winter Olympics opening tomorrow in Vancouver, Canada, but I felt the whole letter was worth reading. Enjoy. As Walmart’s travelling “Green Business Summit” is piggyback on the Olympics by setting up shop in Vancouver this week, […]