an environmental conscience: Wal-Mart is
Good for the Environment. The campaign puts
environmentalists in a quandary. Yes, Wal-
Mart sucks, they say, but isn’t conservation by
any means a good thing?
Leftie blogs buzzed about it. On www.dai-
lykos.com, a progressive chat forum, a blogger
named “chris at organicmatter” wrote, “I have
my doubts about Wal-Mart’s motives, [but] it’s
important to recognize when a company does
something positive.”
Another blogger, “fragamemnon,” coun-
tered, “You can’t pretty up a pig with lipstick
… Wal-Mart, through its demand for low-cost
goods, has worsened the global environment
by forcing suppliers to manufacture in coun-
tries with lax environmental policies.”
Regardless, noted “christine in nj,” the
Acres for America contribution is a drop in the
bucket of the company’s revenue. The corpora-
tion pulls in roughly $33 million in sales every
hour. “Sorry,” she wrote. “I can’t get excited.”
Wal-Mart is Good
for the Environment
Hearing its spin doctors at work, you’d
think Wal-Mart was the best thing that’s hap-
pened for the environment since trees.
Spokeswoman Stewart says that in 2004,
Wal-Mart Inc. recycled more than 2.8 million
tons of waste. (She couldn’t say how much
waste Wal-Mart produces annually.) Since
2001, Wal-Mart has participated in the National
Parks America Tour, a volunteer-driven initia-
tive to put more than 10,000 work hours into
park projects. (Wal-Mart contributes by encour-
aging its employees to participate — unpaid.)
And Wal-Mart requires construction firms bid-
ding on Wal-Mart contracts to certify their proj-
ect managers in storm water management.
(This is a smart move, given that Wal-Mart has
spent millions of dollars to settle alleged Clean
Water Act violations for polluted storm water
runoff from its parking lots.) “We’re excited to
be able to say, ‘Storm water is zero tolerance for
us,’” she says.
Stewart paints a portrait of Wal-Mart in
bright greens and gold dust, denying that the
Acres for America campaign is a PR counter-
attack to negative publicity. “The Acres for
America program is designed … to let people
know that we care,” she says cheerily. “We
want folks to understand that Wal-Mart is
good for the environment.”
Wal-Mart is Bad
for the Environment
In The Case Against Wal-Mart, Al
Norman, founder of the national Wal-Mart
ball-busting organization Sprawl Busters,
unfurls a litany of Wal-Mart’s environmental
misdeeds. Among them: Pesticides and fertil-
izers stored on Wal-Mart parking lots across
Connecticut created storm water runoff that
polluted the state’s streams and rivers, leading
state officials to call Wal-Mart “a serious
statewide polluter.” In 2001, Wal-Mart settled
charges of violating the Clean Air Act at con-
struction sites in four Southwestern states, and
in 2004, the company settled charges of ille-
gally selling refrigerators with chlorofluoro-
carbons (CFCs) at Sam’s Clubs.
Wal-Mart’s developers frequently choose
to build on sensitive sites such as wetlands,
lakes, Native American burial grounds and
wildlife preserves, Norman says. Making
matters worse is that much of the environ-
mentally destructive development is for
nothing. Wal-Mart has a habit of closing its
discount stores in order to build larger
Supercenters that turn more profit, Norman
says. Wal-Mart has abandoned about 356
U.S. buildings and their parking lots, totaling
52 million square feet, or more than 1,000
football fields, of unused space.
In that context, Norman says, the Acres for
America is too little, too late. “This is like try-
ing to cover up a smell with perfume,”
Norman tells EW. “I don’t think it works too
well with Wal-Mart, because the odor of bad
ethics keeps coming through.”
Norman compares the Acres for America
campaign to Wal-Mart’s other goodwill ges-
tures — gifts to the Children’s Miracle
Network, college scholarships for African
Americans, the Teacher of the Year Award. He
calls it “cause-related marketing” or, more
bluntly, “loud giving.”
Still, Norman doesn’t knock the Acres for
America program itself. “If they’re going to
give some land anywhere, fine; we’ll take it,”
he says. “It’s like a war reparation. This is not
a company that cares about the land or natural
resources. They have one of the worst track
records in terms of the environment of all the
corporations in America.”
Norman admits that Wal-Mart isn’t the
only bad guy; he says that other big box chains
such as Target, Home Depot and Lowe’s are
also guilty of environmental crimes. The big
box prototype, a sprawling single-level store
that lays waste to open space, is an environ-
mental disaster, he says. “The only thing that
makes Wal-Mart the #1 offender is that they’re
putting up more buildings than any other com-
pany in America. The other companies are not
exonerated; they’re just Wal-Mart Lite.”
American shoppers aren’t off the hook,
either. Consumption fuels the Wal-Mart beast.
“There are two things Americans do in excess:
Eat and shop,” Norman says. “I relate excess
consumption to empty lives. The more our
communities are torn apart, the less we talk to
our neighbors, the more we fill our shelves up
with junk that ends up in the landfills. And Wal-
Mart, with the support of the White House, is
encouraging people to go out and shop.”
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Resistance in Oregon
An old Oregon motto is “Things look differ-
ent here.” Wal-Mart, with roots in Bentonville,
Ark., has found that to be maddeningly true.
While Wal-Mart stores paved across the
U.S. with little resistance for decades, the
company is hitting road blocks in Oregon.
Land-use laws enacted in the 1970s shield
high-quality farmland and wilderness areas
from rampant sprawl. Wal-Mart’s 28 Oregon
stores are far fewer per capita than in almost
any other state, as The Oregonian noted
(“Wal-Mart takes on Oregon the only way it
can: It changes,” 5/30).
Most major Oregon cities, including
Eugene, have drawn urban growth boundaries
that restrict development on high-quality
soils. City Councils in Hillsboro, Hood River,
Oregon City, Medford and Central Point have
denied Wal-Mart proposals on the basis of
land-use conflicts. In Beaverton and
Gresham, Wal-Mart has made architectural
concessions to tailor their store proposals to
community standards.
In Eugene, anti-sprawl and pro-labor
activists fought Wal-Mart’s proposed expan-
sion on West 11th, which will convert the
existing 149,000 sq. ft. discount store to a
218,000 sq. ft. Supercenter by adding a gro-
cery component. And in Bend, more than
JUNE 16, 2005 13