Wal-Mart goes green...

On today's All Things Considered on NPR, there was a story about a new Wal-Mart supercenter being built in McKinney, Texas with all sorts of new environmentally-friendly technologies - more skylights, a new boiler that burns motor oil from the auto shop and oil from the in-store deli, a wind turbine outside in the parking lot to help provide electricity, special HVAC system, and other innovations. Wal-Mart management is understandably proud of this new store - and a matching on in Colorado that will explore the same gree technology in a colder climate - and they have pushed the concept to all the major news agencies.

Not everyone is sold on the idea, however, suggesting that the new technologies are more for public image than for actual environmental care. Feel free to read short piece entitled "Response to Wal-Mart's New 'Green' Store in McKinney, Texas" or this one which deals with a more general concern over Wal-Mart's environmental record or this one that deals with the view of major unions toward Wal-Mart (note: thee negative articles to balance the three positive articles, I'm trying to be a good citizen journalist here.)

My personal view of Wal-Mart is a bit of a convoluted one. I hate going to Wal-Mart because I find that their stores are junky (constantly in need of restocking and straightening of aisles and shelves), often dirty, understaffed (particuarly at the check-out lines and in offering on-floor assistance), and underlit (perhaps the skylights will help, research suggests it will.) And I despise their business practices. They build stores in area in order to over saturate the market, driving smaller competitors out of businesses, and then closing the stores that are the least profitable, leaving empty buildings - which they never owned, only rented after agreeing to rent so that they would be built - that are too large to rent to any other tenant. They are as a corporation so large that they can negotiate whoelsale prices well below those that any of their competitors can ever manage, allowing them to undersell those competitors. There are always charges from their employees that they don't promote women to positions of power and that they do everything they can to break up any unions before they form. And their environmentalism can certainly be called into question.

On the flip side, Wal-Mart is the perfect model of how a business should grow, compete, and ensure its success for the years. They began small, finding themselves a niche where no one else was willing to go. Sam Walton found out exactly what that niche wanted to be filled, and he filled it perfectly. He built his business slowly, determining a business plan that allowed successful growth without overgrowing their support structure. Sam visited every store personally throughout his first years, ensuring that the quality of the stores and the attitude of the employees was up to the standards that he set. When it later became clear that Sam would have to pass his business to his heirs, he made certain that the succession plan was clearly in place. If a new business could choose any company after which to patttern themselves, Wal-Mart would be the perfect match.

Read a bit - I have - before you you decide for yourself. I recommend How Wal-Mart is Destroying America and The Wal-Mart Decade. There are a number of others that would certainly work just fine as well. I'm guessing that your local library would have quite a few in stock.