A lot of news stories have been touting Wal-Mart's flirtation with solar power, with a potential rollout to over 300 stores in the United States. It's a great way for the corporate giant to try and clean some of the tarnish of its image as a skinflint on wages and healthcare. So is this a big change?
While there's no doubt that a energy-sucking big box store will lessen its energy footprint by installing rooftop solar panels, there's a reason local retail activist and expert Stacy Mitchell has said that the best thing Wal-Mart can do for the environment is to stop building stores.
2 comments:
Quoting from "the best thing Wal-Mart can do for the environment is to stop building stores":
"Today, even the simplest of errands, like picking up a gallon of milk or a box of nails, often requires driving several miles to a big-box store. Wal-Mart bears much of the blame for that increase."
Perhaps the author aims to get people angry at Wal-Mart, to counter Wal-Mart's PR campaign.
What if we replaced this statement with the following? With whom are we going to get angry? Instead we choose the above, fighting fire with fire (and perhaps effectively).
"Americans have increasingly chosen, directly or indirectly by choice of neighborhood, to drive several miles to big box retailers such as Wal-Mart for even the simplest of errands. Meanwhile, local businesses have been closing up. The blame for the associated environmental and economic losses in our hometowns rests squarely on our shoulders."
You are right, of course, that individuals have to share the blame for this. We perceive that the big box store is convenient by having many items in one place, forgetting that (all told) we probably spend as much or more time driving, parking, and walking around behemoth stores as we would have walking between several smaller stores in one business district.
I'm as guilty of the rest, doing plenty of shopping at a Target 10 miles away instead of finding local businesses. It's a vicious cycle where the absence of local business drives us to the familiar big box, further sinking the remaining businesses.
One standout against this trend, however, is hardware stores. Ace Hardware and True Value are actually nationwide cooperatives that share marketing and purchasing expenses. Other businesses probably need to learn to do the same, or face failure.
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