Wal-Mart and the Business Case for Green

Walmart’s effort to green its stores, trucking fleet, products, and supply chain, alternately dismissed from the left as window dressing and from the right as a costly distraction, has accomplished something that 40 years of environmental activism and regulation never managed: It moved sustainability from the fringe to the forefront of business concerns.... Read my full article at Grist.org

The point of my piece is not to serve as a counterpoint to the recent series of stories at Grist by Stacy Mitchell -- who found the specifics of Wal-Mart sustainability projects wanting, to say the least -- but to point out that the real value of having such a mega-company trying to become greener, however imperfect those efforts may be, is that it drags the rest of the big business world along with it. Wal-Mart has used the same clout with which it has driven prices down and crushed competitors to do something shockingly different: mainstream sustainability. I have no interest in either lionizing or lambasting Wal-Mart on this score; it's simply a fact, and one that utterly destroys the arguments of the drill-baby-drill crowd by showing that sustainable and planet-friendly choices help America compete and prosper.

The Holiday Newsletter Edition

If you didn't receive my 2011 holiday newsletter, you can grab a copy here and catch up on the the latest about my upcoming book, Garbology, find tips on 12 great last-minute ideas for experience gifts (presence vs. presents) via SecondAct.com, and see greyhounds dressed as reindeer.

If you'd like to subscribe to my very occasional newsletter, drop me a line.

Have a joyful holiday season and may you find the New Year you truly want.

Messy Sustainability is Better Than None

The sustainability success story continues to percolate through the business world, demonstrating the vitality and value of green initiatives. BSR's Melanie Janin writes at GreenBiz.com about companies willing to further their efforts to become greener by publicly airing their dirty environmental laundry along with their accomplishments. Becoming more sustainable is a messy business, but contrary to some of the more unfortunate rhetoric in Washington, the payoff is huge, particularly in a tough economy.

I'll be joining Janin at BSR's annual conference in San Francisco in November to discuss Force of Nature and the big-business sustainability story.

Why You Should Care About Wal-Mart's Greener Biz - LAT OpEd

If you care about green, it's hard not to view these as the worst of times, marked by looming climate, water and energy crises, vanishing fisheries, mile-a-minute deforestation — the list is numbingly endless. In response, we have a largely apathetic public, an environmental lobby rendered toothless by said apathy, a political left and center paralyzed by fear that protecting the planet might hurt the economy, and a political right that's never been more virulently opposed to all things green as job-killing, business-bashing burdens and boondoggles.

But then there's ... Wal-Mart.

Read on at LATimes.com...

Page 99

Ford Madox Ford once asserted: "Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you."

Marshal Zeringue, author, playwright and head honcho at the Campaign for the American Reader, turned Ford's quip into an actual test. So when Marshal asks if you'd like to run your book through the Page 99 test, a mad scramble ensues to see what accident of typography and layout had put on that particular page, before you email back and say, sure!

Here's the Page 99 test for Force of Nature, which, as it happens, concerns a pivotal moment in 2005 when Wal-Mart, Hurricane Katrina, and a fledgling green initiative at the king of the big box stores  all collided --with surprising results.

Force of Nature Media

Media Update III: Wal-Mart: Force of Nature or Greenwashing? A discussion at the Commonwealth Club's ClimateOne program in San Francisco.

Media Update II: How Wal-Mart won over a Sierra Club President. Fortune Magazine excerpts Force of Nature.

Media Update: Can Going Green Make Wal-Mart Cool? Kerry A. Dolan writes at Forbes that Force of Nature "spins a compelling tale."


I'm just back from the San Francisco leg of the Force of Nature book tour, following this review in the New York Times. Reviewer Bryan Burrough writes:

The idea that “going green” could actually be profitable, a notion put forth by economists as long as 20 years ago, remains a source of skepticism in some quarters. If you still need convincing, pick up Edward Humes’s excellent new book, “Force of Nature” (Harper Business, 265 pages, $27.99), the story of how the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, came to go green. I’ll wager that you won’t look at sustainability issues quite the same way again. It certainly opened my eyes.

...Mr. Humes does here what the very best business books do. He finds a good story to help illuminate an issue of surpassing importance.... Mr. Humes’s prose is almost flawless, lean and clear, egoless and spare. He doesn’t deify or demonize Wal-Mart or any of the characters; in fact, he says Wal-Mart’s very business model is probably unsustainable. This is first-rate work — both by the author and by Wal-Mart itself.