LaurieS’s Recent Comments

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  Main Street could - and would - come back

  MT, as I posted previously, I question the accuracy of the assumption that somehow Wal-Mart's distribution methods are more resource-efficient than those that serve small stores.

  But besides that, I also wanted to comment on your statement that "if WalMart reduced their global impact that still wouldn't bring back most of the friendly little downtowns."

  I've already tried to make a case for my belief that the only way Wal-Mart can really reduce their global impact in any meaningful way is if they go out of business: their whole business model is so fundamentally and catastrophically bad for the environment there's no way they can possibly significantly offset the damage they must do. And if we stay smart, don't fall for the greenwashing, keep making noise, more people will start to think like us, and eventually there will be fewer Wal-Marts.  And then, yes, the friendly little downtowns would come back.  The entrepreneurial spirit of the average person is very strong; lots of people dream of having their own little Main Street business.  Give them a business environment in which they stand a chance of succeeding and it's nothing short of amazing the way they'll stick their necks out - and that's a critical part of what makes a town into a community, instead of a cold collation of cookie-cutter concrete boxes siphoning local dollars - and personal information - off to distant corporate headquarters, and staffed by bored workers in dead-end jobs.On The impossibility of a green Wal-Mart posted 2 years, 7 months ago 27 Responses

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  Distribution "efficiency" - or not

  I notice that a couple of people have made the assertion that WalMart's distribution is more efficient than that of the Mom & Pop stores.  But I wonder if anyone actually has any facts to back up that assumption.

  I'm a small retailer, and my store stock comes predominantly from 2 large distributors that specialize in serving my industry (natural foods) and deliver to me by tractor-trailer.  I really doubt that WalMart's distribution is any more efficient than that which serves small stores.   Distributors have to maximize their efficiency; they plan out routes very carefully and will not deliver to anyone if the extra stop means more than a couple of miles off the route they'd be taking anyway.  In my 6 years in business, this has consistently been an issue.  What that tells me is that the more little stores on an established delivery route, the better the efficiency of the run.  My store actually helps make that run greener than it would be if I wasn't here - those trucks would be going past me anyway.  Given the volume of product a Wal-Mart moves each day, I'm assuming that a single Wal-Mart must be served by several semis a day that come directly from the warehouse specifically to that store that perhaps drive right past many other Wal-Marts (I don't know that for a fact; I'm just guessing); how is that more efficient than a truck that sets out from the warehouse and delivers to 2 dozen stores - and picks up stock along the way to bring back to the warehouse - in a carefully-planned route?  If I'm wrong in my guess about how the goods get to a Wal-Mart, and in fact a given truck makes a loop from a distant warehouse to several different WalMarts, then that's no different than what my distributors do and just bolsters my argument.

  Then factor in the energy savings if the 500 or so people in my small town would shop at my store instead of driving to the nearest Wal-Mart (which is over 30 miles in either direction, or I'd probably be out of business): the improvement in efficiency over the current state  would be astonishing.  Again, as I said in my earlier and admittedly preachy comment (sorry - it said "Soapbox" so I got up on it) there's nothing Mal-Wart can do in terms of building or packaging efficiency that can possibly offset the damage they do just by existing - first, as stated above, in the damage they do in manufacturing the goods overseas and then shipping them here, and then as Ms. Mitchell's piece stated, in drawing shoppers away from businesses like mine that they could literally walk to and into their cars instead for that 40-minute drive.

  In our town, we don't have a general merchandise store; we're too small.  But there used to one, an Ames, in a town about 17 miles away.  That was a relatively close source for anything from housewares and small electronics to kids' shoes and office supplies.  Then Wal-Mart came to a small city a further 15 or so miles away, and that was the death knell for the Ames.  The new Wal-Mart siphoned off so many shoppers like children after the Pied Piper that now everyone has to drive the extra 30+ mile round trip: there's nowhere else to buy those things.   Even those who chose to shop locally as long as they could had the decision to drive further forced on them when the Ames was driven out of business by shoppers who couldn't see past the end of their own noses.  Thanks to Wal-Mart, the days when you could get by with what you could find within walking distance of your house - that is, when a civilized life in a small town without owning a car was quite possible - are coming to a close. It's all part of the trend over the last, what, 75 years? of making everything more auto-dependent and more hostile to people and civic life.

  But the awareness created by people like Ms Mitchell is making a difference.  Wal-Mart's sales have been affected negatively, which, as someone noted above, is very likely the single greatest impetus for this new initiative of theirs.  So they're not impervious...remember, David won!  So keep on boycotting, keep on showing those films, and don't be suckered by the green veneer.

  P.S. My store is 2 miles from my house, and my daughter and I bike to work most of the year.  Local stores tend to be staffed by people who live nearby.  So even getting the staff to the local stores is more efficient than getting Wal-Mart employees to their distant and dreary stations each day...and by the way, have you heard about their new staffing policy, in which they want to send their employees home during slow times, and bring them back for the peak times?  Think about the impact of that on air quality, traffic congestion, and fuel consumption! - twice as much travel for the same few hours' worth of pay!On The impossibility of a green Wal-Mart posted 2 years, 7 months ago 27 Responses

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  The impossibility of a green Wal-Mart

  I logged in to expand on Stacy Mitchell's piece with my first reaction while reading, which is that perhaps the driving to the stores, while a  significant problem, does not address what to me makes it impossible for Wal-Mart to ever be green in any significant way - but then noticed that others have caught the same ironies.  So I'll elaborate:
  WalMart and other big box stores like Home Depot pioneered the strategy of forcing domestic suppliers to take their operations to China. This is so anti-green that there's no amount of store energy-efficiency or packaging reduction that can make a dent in the overall bashing the environment takes in getting the goods from there to here and everywhere else.
  

  1. Environmental controls that made domestic manufacturing less toxic to the planet are not in force in China, and now the Chinese can't breathe their own air and their water is catastrophically fouled.  What's more, folks, the excessive CO2 emissions that are generated on the other side of the world affect all of us everywhere.  And China may be far away, but it's still part of our environment.
     
  2. Vast number of containers, on petroleum-fueled container ships using up limited petroleum resources and belching pollutants as well as particulates and yet more CO2, cross the Pacific constantly.  That's our air, too, and oh, part of our food supply and protein source for the world...Not to mention heat sink and climate controller.
     
  3. Think the excessively long-distance travel of goods that could have been - and used to be - made locally isn't a noticeable, measurable, factor with tangible detrimental effects (and high costs that aren't factored into the nominal cost of the goods)?  The port city (Long Beach, CA, if memory serves) where those container ships unload has extremely high asthma rates because of the intense air pollution generated by the container ships.
     
  4. Because WalMart goods are cheap (in both senses), the easy availibility and disposability encourages short-term ongoing consumption rather than long-term investment in a quality product.  I can't tell you how much usable stuff I've picked up at our local transfer station over the years.  Easy come, easy go.

  To those who say that hey, WalMart's just giving consumers what they want, or, let's not penalize them for having a business plan that works, I say, No Excuses, please.  What you're really saying is that WalMart should be let off the hook for consciously choosing to opportunistically profit from ignorance, mindless consumerism, and the basest race-to-the-bottom, what's-in-it-for-me mentality.  We all know that people love to be told what they want to hear, and by the same token, when you build a business plan on the idea that it's really OK to save 5 bucks and sell your neighbor's job down the river, it helps legitimize selfishness in the public mind.

  Yes, we need more consumer consciousness; yes, each of us needs to continue changing our own driving and consumption habits.  But as long as there's an easy way out like WalMart, and as long as people keep taking this terrible, 'hey, we can't beat 'em so let's just stop talking about the (very real) problem,' there will continue to be a large segment of the population who, because the defeatists and rationalizers are diluting the message, will remain ignorant & seduced by the apparent convenience and deceptively low prices of the big boxes.  Don't lay down and die by degrees!  The only way those unthinking consumers will ever start 'thinking outside the Box' is if we all keep hammering:  No slack for WalMart; their entire business model is anti-environment (not to mention anti-people). Until they stop supporting environmentally-exploitive manufacturing and global transport, nothing they can do will begin to offset the damage they do.On The impossibility of a green Wal-Mart posted 2 years, 7 months ago 27 Responses