First came Wal-Mart's decision to push for lower prices for compact fluorescent lightbulbs, those swirly, energy-efficient alternatives to the incandescent ones. Then, it started offering redesigned milk jugs that, by decreasing storage and delivery costs, also will reduce energy consumption. And, most recently it announced a new emphasis on stocking its stores with more produce grown locally rather than shipped from longer distances.
Suddenly, Wal-Mart is getting harder to hate.
Could Wal-Mart, dubbed Sprawl-Mart by its detractors, actually be turning into a friend of the Earth, a foe of excessive energy consumption and even that trendiest of utter feel-goodliness, an actual locavore?
Well, let's not get carried away here - especially for city dwellers, you still may have to drive miles and miles out of your way to get to a Wal-Mart and you still will find them filled with all manner of your favorite petroleum-based plastic products, those highly-processed, fructose-intense snack foods and just all that mass-consumerist stuff that will clog your closets until you toss them out to clog the landfills.
Still, the retailing giant may have discovered something that will do more to promote the environmental cause than mere good intentions - it can pay to go "green."
Let's hear it for self-interest. That has always seemed like the missing link, the one thing that prevented well-meaning people from not just thinking about doing what was right for the environment, but actually acting on it. For too long, eco-correctness has seemed to many like a luxury, something you could afford if you were a rich movie star like Leonardo DiCaprio, something that was a nice little hobby for the Whole Foods-Whole Paycheck set. But now, even the proudly downscale, the cheap-at-all-costs Wal-Mart has seen the light, or at least the cost savings, in doing the right thing environmentally.
If you're wincing every time you fill up your gas tank, imagine what it costs Wal-Mart to fuel up all those trucks you see on the highway. No wonder the company started buying more produce from local growers, and shortening the average 1,500 miles that fruits and vegetables generally travel between the farmer and the consumer. It's the same motivation that has led the company, and others, to move toward a new, flat-topped milk jug that can be stacked and more easily stored and transported. According to a New York Times graphic, the new design allows for a twice-weekly rather than four- or five-times-weekly delivery schedule to the typical Sam's Club.
