If Retailers Want to Survive, They Must Stay on the Green Path

Retailers trying to cut costs in this flailing economy have been sent a strong message from consumers: don’t sacrifice your efforts to go green. A survey by Havas Media of 20,000 consumers in 10 countries found that 80% would reward brands that adopted sustainable practices and 72% would punish those who don’t bother.

From Reuters:

Some 48 percent of the people surveyed also said they were prepared to pay a little bit more for sustainable goods.

The survey found retailers scored highly in such areas such as responsible marketing, fair prices and sale of healthy products, with companies like Wal-Mart in the United States, El Cortes Ingles in Spain and Marks & Spencer in Britain identified by consumers as leaders in the field.

However, store groups performed less well in areas like packaging, recycling, sourcing of goods and fair pay.

The fact that the mainstream public has put such a high value on sustainability is enormously encouraging, but Christ on a bicycle, how in the gullible toothless hell is it that so many people see Wal-Mart as a “leader in the field”?

Even the company itself has admitted that its campaign to convince the public that it’s environmentally responsible “has been positive from a PR standpoint, but one of the things we learned is that we are not sophisticated enough to spin a story — ultimately, we’d get hammered. We are not out saying we’re a green company. We are not green. We have an extraordinary distance to go.”

Straight from the horse’s mouth, yet commercials about Wal-Mart selling CFLs (whoop-de-freaking-doo) are still influencing public opinion of the company. Nice job, Wal-Mart PR & marketing team.

Link [Reuters]
Photo credit: Ed Zurga, Bloomberg News via Treehugger

Is Food Still ‘Local’ if it’s Grown by a Nationwide Brand?

If you live in Florida, is a Tropicana orange ‘locally grown’? That’s what Environmental Economics is wondering after a recent USA Today article questioned what the term ‘local food’ really means. While retailers have been quick to jump on the consumer desire for food grown closer to home, some of them seem to be stretching the boundaries of what’s really considered local, like – surprise – Wal-Mart.

From USA Today:

• Wal-Mart, the nation’s biggest retailer, considers anything local if it’s grown in the same state as it’s sold, even if that’s a state as big as Texas and the food comes from a farm half the size of Manhattan, as in the case of the 7,000-acre Ham Produce in North Carolina.

• Whole Foods, the biggest retailer of natural and organic foods, considers local to be anything produced within seven hours of one of its stores. The retailer says most local producers are within 200 miles of a store.

• Seattle’s PCC Natural Markets considers local to be anything from Washington, Oregon and southern British Columbia.

Jim Prevor, editor of Produce Business and author of the blog Perishable Pundit, disputes Wal-Mart’s characterization of citrus grown in Florida but sold nationwide as a local product, saying that counting a product that is nationally shipped as local doesn’t seem to fit the meaning of ‘locally grown’.

It’s definitely a good thing to be on the lookout for greenwashing, but being on high alert all the time can perhaps lead us into a sticky quagmire of questions with no real answer. Many people equate ‘local’ with ‘small business’, and would simply rather give their business to the little guy instead of the huge corporation, while others would accept those large companies as local brands.

But, people often don’t consider the fact that some varieties of food simply don’t grow well in their area, and farms looking to take advantage of the local food movement could use environmentally unsound practices in an attempt to, say, grow bananas in Arkansas (and then market said bananas to Arkansans as local). So, in some cases, unless you’re willing to give up food that doesn’t grow well in your area (which, of course, would be the greenest choice), it can make less of an impact to import food from its native region. The mind spins. What’s your take?

Link [USA Today] via [Environmental Economics]
Photo credit: Flickr user jonny.hunter

Watch the Wal-Mart Virus Spread Across America

Walking through the crowded, narrow aisles of Wal-Mart, you may be inclined to keep your arms as close to you as possible and avoid touching most surfaces. After all, the place is so crowded at any given time, it wouldn’t be surprising if you took home more than just a $20 stereo. So, it stands to reason that Flowing Data’s map of Wal-Mart’s spread across America between 1965 and 2007 looks like a nasty green virus taking over the country.

It’s kind of mesmerizing to watch, really. It starts out slow and then picks up really quickly. I love that you can zoom, I just wish it had a play bar so you could pause, step ahead, go back, etc. Wal-Mart truly is a plague upon the land.

Visit Flowing Data to see it for yourself.

Link [Flowing Data]

New ‘Green’ Milk Jugs Not Cutting it with Consumers

So, apparently green milk jugs kind of suck. At least, that’s according to the Wal-Mart and Costco shoppers who have purchased the newly redesigned gallon jugs and complain about how hard they are to pour. These new jugs have been introduced because they’re cheaper to ship, better for the environment, cost less and provide fresher milk to the store. The new shape makes the jugs stackable and eliminates the need for crates. Indentations in the plastic give the jugs structural support.

From The New York Times, via Treehugger:

The jugs have no real spout, and their unorthodox shape makes consumers feel like novices at the simple task of pouring a glass of milk.

“I hate it,” said Lisa DeHoff, a cafe owner shopping in a Sam’s Club here.

“It spills everywhere,” said Amy Wise, a homemaker.

“It’s very hard for kids to pour,” said Lee Morris, who was shopping for her grandchildren.

Eco-Fail – not because it’s not innovative or is a bad idea, but because this is the sort of thing that turns off the millions of Wal-Mart shoppers from ‘green’ products and ideas. I mean, great way to turn the Wal-Mart set green – take away their easy pouring milk jugs and give them something to complain about, especially in this nation of resistance to change. They’re more than likely not going to care if the jugs help the environment if they can’t even pour milk into a bowl of cereal without spilling it.

A commenter on the Treehugger post suggested some kind of reusable accessory – stainless steel, perhaps – that mounts onto the jug to make it easier to pour. Great idea, but would Wal-Mart shoppers really go for that? They want simple, cheap and fast. Perhaps another redesign is in the cards – one that’s more practical for everyday use.

Link [The New York Times] via [Treehugger] via [Bag of Nothing]
Photo credit: David Maxwell for the New York Times

Axis of Corporate Evil: Taco Bell, Wal-Mart, and the NRA Hired Black Ops Private Security Team to Spy on Green Activists

Taco Bell, Wal-Mart, and the NRA hired the private security firm Carlyle Group to get all “black ops” on eco-activists asses. They rumaged through their garbage to find confidential documents (the lesson here- shred your papers) and even social security numbers.

A private security company organized and managed by former Secret Service officers spied on Greenpeace and other environmental organizations from the late 1990s through at least 2000, pilfering documents from trash bins, attempting to plant undercover operatives within groups, casing offices, collecting phone records of activists, and penetrating confidential meetings. According to company documents provided to Mother Jones by a former investor in the firm, this security outfit collected confidential internal records—donor lists, detailed financial statements, the Social Security numbers of staff members, strategy memos—from these organizations and produced intelligence reports for public relations firms and major corporations involved in environmental controversies.

In addition to focusing on environmentalists, the firm, Beckett Brown International (later called S2i), provided a range of services to a host of clients. According to its billing records, BBI engaged in “intelligence collection” for Allied Waste; it conducted background checks and performed due diligence for the Carlyle Group, the Washington-based investment firm; it provided “protective services” for the National Rifle Association; it handled “crisis management” for the Gallo wine company and for Pirelli; it made sure that the Louis Dreyfus Group, the commodities firm, was not being bugged; it engaged in “information collection” for Wal-Mart; it conducted background checks for Patricia Duff, a Democratic Party fundraiser then involved in a divorce with billionaire Ronald Perelman; and for Mary Kay, BBI mounted “surveillance,” and vetted Gayle Gaston, a top executive at the cosmetics company (and mother of actress Robin Wright Penn), retaining an expert to conduct a psychological assessment of her. Also listed as clients in BBI records: Halliburton and Monsanto.

Evil motherbleeping corporations. Souless, hungry, exploitative corporations. Grrr… This stuff makes Mr. Cranky Green mad!

Link [Mother Jones] via [The Raw Story]

Video Shows Growth of Wal-Mart Matches Outbreak of Infectious Disease

This is awesome- Kiwi Tobes has a downright creepy video showing the growth of Wal-Mart since its founding. I’d be willing to lay a tenner down on the table betting that the growth of Wal-Mart is similar to the outbreak pattern of an infectious disease released from Bentonville- think Stephen Kings The Stand here.

It’s pretty damn clever how the video was put together. Here’s what Kiki Tobes says:

Freebase has a topic for every zip code, along with it’s longitude and latitude. Here’s one example. One query pulls out all the ZIP codes along with their longitudes and latitudes. You can turn longitudes and latitudes into graphical coordinates with some simple transformations (which will vary based on the region you’re plotting and how big your image is) — here are the ones I used:

x=(longitude+127)*16
y=(50-latitude)*20

If you plot all the ZIP codes using a library like PIL, you get a nice map with dots that roughly match population density, which has the advantage of looking a little bit like a night-time satellite photo of the United States.

Freebase also contains a list of Wal-mart locations, along with their addresses and the year that they opened. Here’s an example. One query pulls all of these out of Freebase.

To create the animation, I generated 30 images for each year starting with 1962. I spread all the Wal-marts that opened that year over the 30 frames. To show the appearance of a Wal-mart, all I had to do was plot a large white dot over the small yellow dot for the appropriate ZIP code. I turned the 1380 images into an animation using MEncoder.

Here’s a version I found on YouTube, but I like the one on Kiki Tobes much better. There’s something about seeing it spread out into the black and slowly trace the outline of the country, as if the ocean is the only thing holding its hungry growth back. Click over and watch the Kiki Tobes version, it’s worth the minute it’ll cost you.

Link [Kiwi Tobes] via [Boing Boing]