Their is an infinite palette of greens ranging from the sensible-shoe-wearing, tree-hugging, gray haired octogenarian blowing up oil pipelines in Nigeria to the good ol’ boy who keeps a litter bag hanging from the cigarette lighter knob in his Ford 150.

And that’s not a bad thing.

But just as national politics seemed to have descended into a Dantian nightmare of RINOs and DINOs, so too has the environmental movement I first became part of in 1969 become hampered by finger pointing and greener-than-thou pronouncements.

As I wrote yesterday, Wal-Mart’s most recent report on sustainability has attracted international attention and seems doomed to become a sound-bite fest of claims and blames.

[Disclaimer: I'm still working my way through the 60-page report, as well as the 43-page rebuttal.]

Yesterday, The Washington Post played this quote high in its story on the report:

“Working with Wal-Mart is a little like dealing with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” said Michael Marx, executive director of Corporate Ethics International, which contributed to the critique. “Environmentally, I really believe it wants to do the right thing. The Mr. Hyde Wal-Mart often turns around and does terrible things to totally undercut all its good work.”

Recognizing that kind of ambiguity is a good. It’s important that we retain the image that all players in the environmental movement
express, in some form, that kind of dichotomy.

Because the shades are important. We can rightly protest work for change in those Hyde aspects of Wal-Marts while applauding the Dr. Jekyll portion that gives us gains like this:

When Wal-Mart does aim correctly, its size has the potential to turn even the smallest tweaks into landslide changes. The sustainability report cites the example of the Charmin 6 Mega Roll pack, which contains the same amount of toilet paper as a regular pack of 24 rolls. That allows Wal-Mart to ship 42 percent more units on their trucks, eliminating 89.5 million cardboard rolls and 360,087 pounds of plastic wrapping and reducing its fuel consumption by 53,966 gallons.

When you’re the world’s largest retailer, that simple change makes a big difference.

I’ll continue to hold both the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde realities in my head. It won’t explode.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, November 17th, 2007 at 1008 by Jeff Hess and is filed under Environment. 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.