GOING GREEN IN A BIG WAY
The five-and-dime thrift shop that Sam Walton built into the world's largest retailer is changing expectations in a big way. Consider that Walmart is succeeding where many governments have failed: legislating behavioral change by raising awareness, facilitating best practices, sharing information, and holding suppliers and partners accountable—all within the framework of sound business principles.
Green is not a contrived part of the business that preys on consumer conscience at the store shelf, then fails to deliver at the loading dock. Business strategy and sustainability go hand-in-hand.
For Elizabeth Fretheim, Walmart's director of business strategy and sustainability, the retailer's ethos is an augmented reality.
"Within the transportation function, for example, we want to accomplish three goals: fill every trailer to capacity; drive those trailers the fewest miles possible; and use the most efficient equipment," she explains. "All these efforts drive sustainability, as well as operational efficiency."
Walmart's green strategy is centrally organized; it has a clear roadmap for where it wants to go. In its quest for a 100-percent renewable energy power supply, for example, the company aims to procure seven billion kilowatt hours of renewable energy globally every year by 2021—a 600-percent increase over 2010 levels—and reduce by 20 percent the kilowatt-hour-per-square-foot energy intensity required to power its buildings globally during the same period.