WebHot: Walmart's Bad Green Report Card

Writer Patty Lovera has an illuminating – if alarming – takedown of Walmart’s frequent green boasting. Her Grist feature, “Top 10 Ways Walmart Is Failing on Sustainability,” points out that while “Walmart’s green PR machine has been running on overdrive lately,” the retail giant gets an F on its environmental and social report card in 10 critical categories.

Summarizing an analysis done by Food and Water Watch, Lovera notes, among other things, that Walmart falls flat by gobbling up previously undeveloped land for its big box stores, selling organic versions of processed products made by industrial food giants and spreading poverty by degrading the quality of life of neighborhoods where it locates.

Lovera also takes aim at Walmart’s recently published, 126-page Global Responsibility Report that ballyhoos the beneficial role Walmart plays on the environmental stage and in the lives of its employees and the communities it operates in. “If,” Lovera writes, “you try to really digest the content and compare it to reports from previous years, you begin to realize that much of the data [are] elusive. The same stats aren’t reported consistently each year. The metrics shift; promises touted one year are glossed over the next.”