After reading "Catch a Wave" and a number of other articles in Grist about the greening of large, corporate businesses, I want to raise two questions.

Number one, the links that became apparant between workers, environmentalists and international human rights activists are in jeopardy if we jump on the green wal-mart bandwagon.  Wal-mart still refuses to allow workers to unionize and has an awful track record of race and gender discrimination among workers.  I can't imagine people concerned with making it possible for working class people to survive as the gaps between haves and have nots increase will really care that Wal-mart customers can now buy orgaic produce and high-end wine.  Also, the majority of cheap plastic crap that Wal-mart has to offer was made in sweat shops in countries that don't have much in the way of labor and environmental regulations.

Some kinds of enviornmental reforms appeal mostly to elites.  Sure, large markets for organic growers is a good thing, but the economy of scale makes it more likely that this food will come from large corporate than small, family farms.  Also, is it worth turning on the progressive coalitions that are finally beginning to develop so that Wal-mart can make some small, incremental changes.  I would like to think environmentalism is about something more radical than that.

Secondly, Wal-mart's popularity is based on its ability to convince people to buy more stuff.  They offer everything inexpensively, making their profits off an increase in overall consumption (plus their awfully low labor costs).  Is it even possible to have an environmetnalism that involves all of us in developed countries continuing to buy all of this needless stuff?  And is it possible to have a business that is not about, in some way, promoting this consumer mentality.

Even if wal-mart is for real, it represents, at best, a small improvement in the current way of doing business.  This is a good thing, but we need to keep imagining totally new ways.

can never be green.  One of Wal-Mart's greatest sins is that it destroys undeveloped land to build stores with huge parking lots and entices people to drive many miles to shop at those stores instead of shopping locally.  This is not to say that Wal-Mart can't do less environmental harm than it's now doing while still earning the same profit, but we shouldn't be fooled into thinking that any business that destroys open space, encourages extra driving, or encourages needless consumption can be a green business.

For those of you who are not fans of WalMart, it may interest you to know that they have just been conned in regards to their new "Green" packaging that is using PLA instead of polyethylene. Firstly, in the manufacture of PLA, more greenhouse gases are given off than in the case of regular polyethylene.(See "How Green Are Green Plastics", Scientific America, August 2000.)Secondly,those new "biodegradable" containers that they are starting to use are not biodegradable. They are compostable. The only way that PLA/NatureWorks containers will degrade is if they are put into a municipal compost pile. How many people recycle their containers into a compost pile? I would venture to guess none.Municipal compost piles are generally used for household scraps and yard waste. So all those containers will end up in the landfill and last as long as regular plastic containers- around 400 years. So the idea that these containers are a help to the environment is not true.The kicker is that they will cost WalMart more than the regular plastic containers.Sounds like WalMart did not do its homework.