“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”This philosophy echoes the “seventh generation” philosophy of the Native
American Iroquois Confederacy, which mandated that chiefs always consider
how their actions would play out seven generations in the future.In 1992, 178 governments endorsed the Rio Declaration on Environment and
Development, also known as Agenda 21, an environmental summit in Brazil.248 Part IV: Managing the Flow of Information
Sustainability in action: The Wal-Mart effect
Sustainability enhances the bottom line. Just
ask the most notorious cost cutting behemoth
of them all — Wal-Mart. When CEO Lee Scott
took over in 2000, the company faced a series of
PR woes: a class action lawsuit by female
employees, opponents blocking new stores,
criticism for its stingy wages and health bene-
fits, and millions of dollars in fines for violating
air- and water-pollution laws.The company began a PR counterattack to
polish its image. But then something funny
happened — it found sustainability made good
business sense too. Wal-Mart discovered that
by eliminating excessive packaging on its Kid
Connection toy line, it could save $2.4 million a
year in shipping costs, 3,800 trees, and one mil-
lion barrels of oil. Wal-Mart determined it could
save $26 million a year in fuel costs for its fleet
of 7,200 trucks merely by installing auxiliary
power units that keep cabs warm or cool while
drivers rest during mandatory ten-hour breaks
from the road. Before that, drivers would let
their engines idle, wasting fuel.
In 2006, Wal-Mart announced plans to invest
$500 million in sustainability. It will double the
efficiency of its vehicle fleet in ten years, reduce
solid waste from US stores by 25 percent in
three years, and cut energy consumption by 30
percent. Its stores also have boosted offerings
of eco-friendly products: It’s the biggest seller
of organic milk and the biggest buyer of organic
cotton in the world.Wal-Mart operates 14 “sustainable value net-
works,” made up of Wal-Mart executives, sup-
pliers, environmental groups, and regulators that
focus on areas such as facilities, internal oper-
ations, logistics, alternative fuels, packaging,
chemicals, food and agriculture, electronics,
textiles, forest products, jewelry, seafood, and
climate change. The company opened dialogs
with the World Wildlife Federation, the Natural
Resources Defense Council, and Greenpeace.
“Sustainability helped us develop the skills to
listen to people who criticize us and to change
where it’s appropriate,” Scott says.The company is the biggest private user of elec-
tricity in the US — each of its 2,074 supercenters
uses an average of 1.5 million kilowatts annually.
It also has the nation’s second-largest fleet of
trucks, which travel a billion miles a year. By
Wal-Mart’s own admission, its U.S. operations
were responsible for 15.3 million metric tons of
carbon emissions in 2005 — more than the com-
bined emissions of Bolivia and Cyprus.
But the sheer size of Wal-Mart means that even
small changes have huge reverberations
because its supply chain is so big. The environ-
mental campaign that Scott admits started out as
a “defensive strategy” was, in his view, “turning
out to be precisely the opposite.” Employees felt
better about the company, the company saved
money, and customers did, too. In short, sustain-
ability turned out to be a bottom line strategy, too.