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The birth of a granddaughter, Hurricane Katrina,
a stagnant stock price, and a poor public
image. In 2005, these are the reasons why
Walmart CEO, Lee Scott, sought to drastically
pivot the company’s goals. “What if,”
Scott dreamed up in a speech, “we used our
size and resources to make this country and
this earth an even better place for all of
us: customers, associates, our children, and
generations unborn?” And so, Scott set Walmart
down a path of sustainable enterprise, seeking
100% renewable energy, zero waste, and more
sustainable products over the course of the
next decade and a half. The future was bright,
or, at least, Scott’s vision was. But, this
new, idealistic version of Walmart seems to
run counter to the reality of Walmart’s
operations. A truly massive multinational
company that spans continents, Walmart has
been either the biggest or second biggest
company in the world since 2000. In 2019,
it employed 2,200,000 people, and with this
size comes power. Over the last two decades,
documentaries and investigative reports alike
have revealed Walmart’s reliance on worker
exploitation, oppressive wages, and sweatshop
labor in order to keep their prices low. So,
with these two realities in mind, I want to
look at another axis of Walmart’s operations:
sustainability. Specifically, how is Walmart
really impacting the environment?
Despite Walmart’s size, it was remarkably
hard to find up-to-date information about
its climate and sustainability-related actions.
Or rather, there is a fair amount of readily
available information, but it’s all in the
form of Walmart press releases. So, let’s
start off with what Walmart says they're doing,
and then see if it actually aligns with their
actions. Walmart’s most recent environmental
target has been branded the one gigaton project.
The company is trying to reduce 1 gigaton
of their emissions from their supply chain
by 2030 as well as reduce emissions from their
own operations by 18% by 2025. Walmart claims
in their 2019 Environmental, Social, and Governance
Report that they are well on their way to
reaching those goals. Among Walmart’s list
of advertised accomplishments in 2019, they
have spurred an 11% decrease in fuel emissions
since 2018 eliminating 87,000 metric tons
of truck emissions from their fleet as well
as diverted 78% of waste materials from the
landfill. They also estimate that 28% of their
global energy needs are supplied with renewables
and they’ve reduced their greenhouse gas
emissions by 6.1% in 2017 compared to 2015
levels. In short, when it comes to fossil
fuels and waste reduction Walmart says it’s
making progress, but the real question is
whether this progress is actually significant
given the sheer scale of the company. To put
it in perspective, Walmart’s annual revenue
is worth more than Costco, Home Depot, Microsoft,
Target and Best Buy’s combined. Essentially,
Walmart wields the power of a country. And
not a small one; a large one with influence
over thousands of suppliers across the world.
So, the pace it sets for its climate action
has a direct effect on climate change.
With Walmart’s own claims out of the way,
let’s look at whether their sustainability
efforts are real and if so, whether these
efforts are actually worthy of the praise
Walmart seems to want. Back in 2005, Lee Scott
sought to carve a road to 100% renewable energy
use across Walmart’s operations. After a
decade and half of sustainability campaigns
and environmental efforts, the EPA reported
that Walmart’s U.S. energy mix only included
5% of renewable energy in 2019. And If we
look at the emissions totals that Walmart
reports to the Climate Disclosure Project
every year, it seems like all of Walmart’s
emissions campaigns are just PR schemes. In
2005, Walmart’s Scope 1 emissions, or those
coming directly from its operations, totaled
4,814,958 metric tonnes. In their most recent
report to CDP, Walmart’s 2018 emissions
total was 6,101,641. So over the course of
13 years, the very same years when Walmart
was supposedly transforming themselves into
a sustainable company, they were instead increasing
their emissions substantially. In short, Walmart
was greenwashing on a large scale. They were
investing some resources in renewables and
sustainable campaigns, but those efforts were
always second to the number one priority at
Walmart: growth. With Walmart’s razor-thin
margins and hyper-growth strategies there
is very little room left for a system-wide
environmental transformation. Walmart has
built its empire on externalizing every cost
they possibly can onto workers, consumers,
and the environment. So to add back in those
costs would eventually mean loss of profit.
This externalization strategy is epitomized
in their low-cost, low-quality products that
allow Walmart to outcompete other local businesses,
ultimately driving costs down and incentivizing
an overconsumption-based economy. Walmart
may have diverted 78% of its own waste from
landfills in 2018, but the shoddy nature of
many of its products leads to significant
waste on the consumer’s end. For example,
Walmart sold a Miley Cyrus-themed bracelet
in 2010 even though they knew the jewelry
contained high levels of the toxic metal cadmium;
when they publicly announced the toxicity
of the bracelets, all those bracelets ended
up in the trash.
And now Walmart is offering a 2 hour shipping
option, a move that once again shows Walmart
will always value the bottom line and growth
over environmental concerns. In the midst
of a global pandemic and stay-at-home orders,
this move will undoubtedly bring more trucks
and fleet vehicles onto the road as more people
rely on online shopping to satisfy their wants
quickly. Online shopping is essential in a
pandemic, but there's a stark difference between
5-day shipping and 2-hour shipping. Offering
2-hour shipping, however convenient, is not
the road to a zero-carbon company, it’s
the exact opposite. As I’ve already mentioned
in my online shipping video, 2-hour shipping
has one of the worst environmental impacts
out of all shipping options. It means inefficient
truck routes, half-filled delivery vans, and
a large fleet to keep up with such a quick
timeline. As shipping time decreases, environmental
damage and emissions increase.
So, with all this in mind it's clear that
Walmart has crafted two identities. The sustainable
leader and the growth-hungry polluter. Given
Walmart’s consistently poor record on worker
well-being, sweatshop labor, pressure on local
businesses, and chemical waste (essentially
everything that isn’t related to growth),
it’s hard to believe that Walmart will ever
become some sort of sustainable messiah. Indeed,
they have yet to really make that much change.
Or rather, they are making similar progress
to other companies in the retail realm but,
as Walmart is 5 times bigger than its competitors,
they should be doing 5 times the work. With
the size that Walmart enjoys, they can not
only influence individuals, but whole governments.
So, when it comes to the environment, they
definitely could be doing a hell of a lot
more than letting their emissions rise 21%
over 15 years while claiming they are an environmental
champion. In this way, Walmart reveals the
downfall of a profit-first, capitalist economy
and puts on display why capitalism will not
be able to quickly mitigate climate change.
Even if Walmart dives headfirst into drastically
reducing emissions, there will always be another
company waiting to take its place. Only through
democratic regulation and a thorough transition
into worker and community owned operations
can this growth-and-profit-over-environment
mindset truly be replaced.
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Hey everyone, Charlie here. I just wanted
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