I have in the past and continue to applaud Wal-Mart’s ecological/environmental efforts, regardless of the fact that the changes are motivated by financial gain and not any altruistic revelation. But I am troubled by this story from Fast Company:

Recent articles about Home Depot and Wal-Mart have detailed the efforts these chains are making to bring green products to their stores as well as what they themselves are doing to decrease their impact on the environment. When the two biggest retail chains in the country want something, people listen.

Home Depot’s initiatives are centered mostly on re-branding some of its current product offerings under its Eco Options program. Over 60,000 products claimed some sort of green quality, but Home Depot prudently narrowed the list down to 2,500. While that may still be a large number, it seems the company has a fairly rigorous process for determining whether a product should be included in the program. The problem is there are no standards for judging the environmental impact of items like spark plugs or rugs.

It’s looking as if that just as it attempted to do with the Organic label, Wal-Mart is seeking to stick a Green label on products that might be marginally environmentally friendly at best. Such marketing disingeniousness can only damage consumers good will toward companies that presume a level of consumer ignorance.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 30th, 2007 at 0603 by Jeff Hess and is filed under Environment, Organics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.